


Resident Evil 7: NOT A HERO

by TheLadyFrost



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Horror, Post-Resident Evil 7, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2018-12-21 21:00:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11952552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyFrost/pseuds/TheLadyFrost
Summary: So why not? Let's pretend it was Chris who showed up at the end of 7 (PS the guy in the game NOT Chris...gross. No) But THIS is Chris. At least my version. When you strip a trumped up god of all his powers, can he rise again? Let's find out.





	1. Chapter 1

Our classic champion has found himself encircled by danger. Set upon by madness, robbed of his abilities, a hero becomes a mortal with no one to help him but a girl abandoned. We play a little around in the aftermath of 7 here with me taking liberties with various parts to make the future of my story more fun. I'll likely jump from character to character via different chapters as I begin to tie it all together. These two concepts are going to intersect along the way when we begin to converge their paths.

It was a fun chapter to write. Stripping a trumped up god of his abilities and making him a man again was quite a challenge. I ask only that we give it a chance to unfold. Those who have read my previous fics, know I generally allow the story to unfold as it goes, rarely do I know what path it will take until I'm slapping the keys.

On that note, let's continue…

…

I. Not a Hero

DULVEY, LOUISIANA, 2017

Something was buzzing in his left ear. He shifted, twitching his nose to see if it would make the itching in it go away. It didn't. What was that buzzing?

His eyes opened and he tried to lift a hand to scratch the itch on his nose but he couldn't. There was no scratching the itch, not right that minute. It was hard to scratch an itch with your hands immobilized.

The room started to come into focus after the blurry edges of his vision came together. His head was pounding like the drum line of a marching band at the big game. The pain was awful. He blamed his focus on the headache for his inability to absorb exactly what was happening to him.

His left arm was bound to something in front of his body and his right was anchored to his side. He was in a room that smelled like something had died, vomited, rotted, reanimated, and died again. The room was one hundred and ten degrees, sweltering, and the one filthy window he could make out in the dim light was boarded up. Sweat rolled down his forehead and dripped off the end of his nose, telling him exactly what had been itching.

He rolled his head on his neck, trying to see more of what was around him. The room was dank, dark, but the dark felt artificial and forced. The chair he was bound to sat at the edge of a table. It was hard to tell in the darkness. He could make out shapes? He wasn't sure. But it was something vaguely human shaped in front of him.

Where was he?

It was interesting that this was the question that came to mind first. Interesting that he didn't address the bigger issue of why he was bound. Or how he had gotten to where he was. He tried to latch on to his last cognitive memory. It was like trying to pick up and hold a slippery eel, he could just about do it, and it would slip away.

There'd been trauma to him, that much was clear. He was wounded; he could feel the throbbing on the back of his head that said he'd been struck. The left side of his face was throbbing in time, telling him he'd taken a blow to the face. But when? Why? And then the worst part of the truth invaded.

He had no clue who he was.

What was his name?

Where was he from?

Why was he here?

So he knew nothing and with that knowledge, the fear finally set in. He was wounded, bound, in a dark hot room with no hope of escape, and he had amnesia. He was, effectively, fucked. How in the hell was he going to get out of this alive?

As if in answer to the question he'd yet to ask, a light flickered, sparked, and shown down upon him. It was an ugly spot light, bright, blinding and burning hot. It caused his eyes to squint, hurting the clearly swollen side of his face.

A voice sounded from somewhere close but seemingly far away, "Whooopsie!" Male with a braying laugh like a jackass, "Too bright? Let's turn that down a bit shall we?"

The spot light angled away toward the far wall and a row of shambling, duct taped, and hastily rigged together televisions began to pop on. The images were all the same: a rather ugly looking man in a faded hoodie with hollow, vacant cheeks and crazy eyes. The man waved.

"Can ya see me?"

He said nothing, too afraid of what was happening. He appeared to be sitting at a table and there was a person across from him bound in a mirroring fashion. Their face was covered by a mask that resembled a clown. Their left hand was anchored in some kind of contraption atop the table, the fingers spread obscenely open.

The man on the screen whistled, rather like you would to a dog to gain its attention. And then the shock happened.

It stole his breath, the electricity, as it shot through the seat of the chair and up his spine. Just a taste of what would happen, most likely, should he fail to play whatever game he was being thrust into. The pain was brief and awful, snapping his teeth together.

"Now…let's try this again, shall we? Can ya see me?"

His voice was hoarse and deep when he answered, "Yeah…I can see you."

No accent. So that wouldn't help him remember who he was. The hand that was bound to the contraption was attached to a nicely muscled arm, showing him to be in strong physical shape. There was a tattoo on the underside of that arm on the forearm that looked like a shield of some kind. Law enforcement?

"Oh goody!" The maniacal man giggled girlishly, "Now that we're all together, what do say we all begin to play a game?"

As if there was really any choice.

"It's really a classic game. We all know it and love it! It's…." And the spot light turned to the center of the table accompanied by the musical aspect of a drum roll, "Russian Roulette!"

He stared at the pistol that lay there, taunting and terrible. It was between him and the person across from him. With little to no warning, the binding on his right hand popped open. The other person lifted their now free hand as well. They stared at each other, prisoner to prisoner.

"So here is how the game works: You pick up the gun, you put it to your temple, you pull the trigger! Easy peasy right!? But what happens when you don't take your turn?! That's right folks, you lose a finger!"

The bound hand, the spread fingers, it all suddenly made terrible sense. Tiny rusty guillotines popped up over all five fingers, some still crusted with the old, dried blood of some pour soul who had come before. The other person whimpered, low in their throat.

The other person appeared to be male as well. They wore a dirty red shirt beneath the ugly, filthy mask covering their face. But he could see the panic in the eyes behind the eye holes. He was sure the same look was echoed in his own.

The maniac on the screen laughed again, braying, giggling, braying, snorting. It was quickly becoming the worst sound in the world. And the spotlight shifted to a form collapsed in the corner of the room.

He suddenly knew why he'd heard all the buzzing. Flies had a tendency to multiply around the dead. The body was slumped to one side, the side of its face blown cleanly away to a ragged, horrid, putrifying mess of exposed bone, rotting brain, and bits and pieces of skin and muscle. A lonely eye rolled uselessly from a busted socket beneath the macabre shit show that had once been a human face.

The other person gagged, gagged harder.

He watched them; dealing with his own nausea, but his voice was firm, hard, "Don't. God damnit. Don't you dare."

If they threw up, he'd throw up. And he'd be damned if he'd give that psycho the pleasure of it.

"Listen to YOU!" Exclaimed the maniac in question, "You are soooooo brave! That's why you're here after all! Because you came to save the day! Remember?"

He watched the maniac reach for a button on the screen and answered quickly, before he could receive another blast of electricity. "No! No I don't remember."

"Well of course not, silly! I done shot you full of juice to make sure of that," The maniac turned the spot light back to the gun before them, "Now that was Jeff. Jeff…lost. But BEFORE he lost, he tried to say no. He tried to resist. And he lost three fingers!"

The spotlight shifted back and forth between the two bound men. "Ya'll don't want to be losin fingers now, do ya? Course not! The game is simple: pick up gun, put to temple, pull trigger….OR….OR OR OR…" And he was dancing in his seat now on the televisions, "You can choose to shoot EACH OTHER! Isn't that fun? Isn't that EXCITING?! And whoever lives…wins!"

He felt the bile, thick and sickening, it rose in his throat. He thought he might pass out from fear, anger, helplessness and hope. Hope. It was a six shot revolver. There were two of them. It wasn't bad odds to survive. And dying…well it beat the hell out of whatever was likely to come next.

"I'm in."

The other man jerked, shocked. "Wait…wait…what?"

"I'm in. What choice do we have? You want to lose all your fingers? I have a feeling we die anyway. Might as well die trying."

"THERE YA GO!" Bellowed the maniac, "What a spirit! I LOVE IT! You've impressed me so much I'm going to give you your names. Hero and Bozo the Clown."

He heard himself speak without realizing he was going to do it, "That's easy enough to remember."

The maniac laughed again, delighted, "Oh I am gonna LOVE breaking you, Hero. The toughest always break the easiest! Enough talk, game on in three…two….one….GO!"

He snatched the gun from the table a moment before his opponent. Apparently he had quick reflexes. And his aim was steady as he pointed it at the other man.

Bozo started to hyperventilate, taking fast, shallow, choppy little breaths. "Oh no…oh no no no. Please. Just…don't. Ok? Please."

He took a deep breath, aimed the gun at the other man, and turned it. With his eyes closed, his breath held, on a silent prayer, he put the gun to his right temple and pulled the trigger.

Click.

A dry fire.

He was afraid he might piss himself in relief. The silence was deafening after that click sounded.

"Jesus…" He laid the gun back on the table and stared at his trembling hand.

"WHOOO!" Squealed the maniac, "That shit was FUUUUUN! We are on a roll now! Keep it comin! Bozo, your turn! GO!"

Bozo whimpered and picked up the gun. He aimed it shakily at the man in front of him. Hero. He looked like the type to be a Hero. Big, almost obscenely buff, and dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans. The white shirt was stained with dried blood and the jeans were dirty over brown boots. He was wearing an ugly wolf mask that obscured his face but the hair that Bozo glimpsed was dark. The wrist bound to the finger guillotine had a fancy GPS watch on it.

"I can't die here." Bozo whined, softly, "I'm sorry. I can't die here."

Hero was breathing slowly, watching him. "I know. No judgement here dude. Go for it."

The revolver bobbled in his hand, terribly unsteady. He shook his head, over and over, "Oh god. I can't. I can't! I can't!"

He laid the gun back on the table, shaking so badly he thought he might throw up. And then the maniac said, "Bozo! You dumb ass! Now you know what happens!" And he said it in a sing song voice, laughing.

Hero watched helplessly as the guillotine dropped…and Bozo's pinkie finger was severed, plunking onto the table between them in a rush and gush of blood and snapping bone. Bozo screamed, jerking against his restraints, flopping uselessly in his seat like a landed fish. His scream was high pitched and awful, tortured, the wail of the damned.

"No time for theatrics, Bozo! Game on! Hero, GO!"

Bozo was still blubbering, whimpering, twitching now repeatedly like a nervous tic. Hero picked up the gun and put it to his temple. Again he breathed, again he prayed, again he braced…and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Dry fire.

Again he nearly vomited.

He set the gun down on the table.

"That's TWOOOO! BOZO! GO!"

Bozo picked up the gun, whimpering like a kicked dog. He aimed the gun at Hero, shuddering. "I'm so sorry. I'm so so so sorry." He hesitated, shaking, shaking, shaking. He didn't want to die here, didn't want to die at all. Hero…that guy looked ready to die. He looked like a guy who ate pieces of shit like the dude on the televisions for breakfast.

Bozo was so desperately afraid.

"BOZO! You better do something!" The maniac taunted, laughing, "Or maybe you want to try life with eight fingers instead?"

Bozo was sobbing now, hiccupping and sobbing, "I can't! I can't! I c-" The guillotine dropped and his ring finger was severed clean, rolling down the chute and flopping onto the table beside the pinkie. Bozo was squealing, jerking, screaming. He began to pull so hard that Hero was afraid he was going to break his own arm in that contraption. "NO NONO NONONO! LET ME GOOOO! LET ME GOO!"

The gun was waving dangerously around in his spare hand. Hero wanted to duck and cover but sat there, uselessly, while the other man panicked and succumbed to the pain of it all. The smell of piss filled the air and mixed with the stench of blood and bone, blood and death, blood and fear. Bozo had pissed himself.

Bozo aimed the gun again at him and his clown mask had come loose on his face and tipped to one side. Hero could see the spittle on his chin and mouth, the maddened drooling of a man no longer in control of himself. There was nothing left that was in human in the pathetic mess in front of him.

He pulled the trigger.

Click.

"No…" Bozo whispered it, "No…"

"Oh so sad. Maybe next time Bozo! Put down the gun!" Taunted the maniac, dancing on the television screens.

"No," Whispered Bozo, "No more. I can't. I can't do it again. I'm sorry."

Hero met his manic gaze. "I know you are."

Bozo held eyes with the other man. "I hope you win."

Hero felt his stomach jerk, hard. "Wait…don't-"

"It's not your turn Boz-"

The gun went off, loud, echoing, and cacophonous. The smell of gunpowder joined the scent of freshly spilling blood, piss, and shit. Hero watched, horrified, as the top of Bozo's head was blown away by the powerful .357 round. The full metal jacket round turned that head into a canoe. The body was still twitching as the lifeless hand dropped the revolver to the floor with a thunk.

"Well gee whiz! What a baby! He took TWO turns!" The guillotine came crashing down on the rest of Bozo's still twitching fingers, severing them. "You're lucky you're dead, you dumb bastard! You RUINED MY GAME!"

Hero felt the tightness in his chest become nearly too painful. He couldn't breathe. He was starting to panic. Staring at the freshly exposed brains and bone, he knew he was going to vomit. He gagged, tried to breathe too deeply to calm himself, and gagged harder. The jolt of electricity through him was the only thing that saved him from throwing up.

His body jerked and flopped, forced into a skin prickling dance as the power of it rocked his system and stole his breath.

"Well I promised I'd set you free if you won…" The maniac laughed harder, "But I kinda lied…I don't want to. Annnnnd I'M THE BOSS!"

More electricity poured through him now. And more still. Bolt upon bolt was put through his body by that evil hand. If he could have gathered a mouthful of air to speak, he'd have cursed that crazy bastard and told him to rot in hell.

So this would be how he died, slowly shocked to death until his brain and body just shit itself, shut down, and short circuited. The panic snapped his teeth together, repeatedly, his head tossed back, fell forward. He thought, this is how the world ends, and then it stopped.

Like the lights had all just gone out.

But they had.

The silence was deep and dark.

Only his panting pervaded it.

Otherwise it was entirely dark once more.

The absence of previous sound and motion was startling. He gasped; his breath shuddered in and out of his lungs, slow and painful. A tiny light flickered with the spin of a metallic wheel and he was staring into dark eyes from too close.

He jerked back and nearly broke his own arm pulling against the restraint.

"SHHH! Stop it now," The southern accent was thick and prevalent, the drawl was accompanied by a soft featured face and a short, no nonsense hair style, "Don't be a fool and go breakin your damn arm. I need you."

Hands began unhooking him. He heard a key turn and his left hand was free. "That idiot Lucas was never any damn good at hiding things. Fifteen minutes was the longest it ever took me to find something he'd tried to keep for himself." A girl, shaggy haired, dressed in a dirty gray tank top and skinny jeans. She jerked the mask off his face and pulled on his arm. "Come on now, no time to explain. You can either trust me and run or wait here for Lucas. I promise you, you don't want to wait."

He rose, slowly. He wasn't quite steady but he could move.

"Ok good. Come on now." There was a sound from somewhere close by. The girl gave him a desperate tug. "Come ON!"

They ran, he was somewhat awkward with the motion of it and in the darkness, but his body told him he'd had some kind of physical demand on it before this. Because he was slow, sure, he was wounded, but he could still MOVE. And he wasn't as clumsy in the dark as he should have been.

She pulled him with her until they came to a roughly cut hole in the wall. She ducked through first and gestured him through. He barely fit, pulling himself out into the sticky, humid night air behind her. The outside still smelled infinitely better then the rabid stench they'd left behind. The night carried the distinguishing stench of bayou, a heady mixture of swamp and stagnant water. The boggy ground shifted as she pulled him forward into a hurried jog.

Holding hands, they raced forward into the darkness. He made out shapes of trees and things as they moved but the damage to his face must have been worse than he originally thought because his vision was spotted red on one side, obscuring the certain aspects of the landscape and offering, at times, double vision of things.

He suspected he might have a concussion and a bad one. He stumbled a little over a felled tree trunk and glanced up at where she was leading him. He went to one knee in the swampy marsh, stumbling a bit as the pain in his head exploded. She grabbed him to her with one arm, "Hold on! Please! We're almost there, suga'. It's just a lil farther now."

She helped him back to his feet, putting his big arm over her thin shoulders, and he leaned heavily on her as she led him into the quiet darkness of the wavering building in front of them. It smelled earthy inside and he glimpsed what appeared to be the inside of a hollowed out tree stump. She quietly closed the make shift door behind her and helped him down a long, winding, curling set of rickety rope stairs.

At the bottom was a mattress and a thin blanket on the earthen floor. Beside the bed was strewn a variety of things: a notebook and a pen, several crumpled papers with drawings and what appeared to be maps, pictures in color and black and white. She led him to the mattress and helped him sit down.

"There we are. It's alright now. He don't know about this place…yet. He was n'er any good at hide and seek either." She twisted the bottom of an old oil lamp and it sputtered to life, filling the darkness with a flickering yellow light. She brought it over toward his face and studied him. "He made a right mess of your face, I'll tell ya that. You won't be as handsome as you might have been once but you'll live."

She turned to a tiny table in the corner and started to assemble things to treat his wounds. "I'm Zoe. And that idiot back there was Lucas, my brother…least he used to be. He ain't really Lucas anymore. Not sure what he is now, tell the truth." She moved toward him and paused when he shied away from her hand. "If I'd been plannin' to kill ya, it'd be done by now. Hold still."

She put some kind of liquid from a bottle onto a rag and started to gently touch his face. The salve she was using had an instant cooling effect, it took away the sting the moment it touched him. After a few long moments of her stroking his skin with it, his vision started to come back in his bad eye.

Curious, he stopped attempting to pull away. She crawled onto the bed behind him now and he could feel her touching his bleeding scalp. "I think he broke your skull," Zoe whistled softly, "You have a hard head to have survived that alone. You have a knot back here big as your fist. You must be as tough as you look to still be standin."

He finally spoke, "I think I need a hospital."

"Probably. But not gonna happen. Not now." He felt her fingers in his hair as she continued to smear the salve on him, "We'd never make it that far. He'd never let us. And she…well…we'll never make it that far."

"He's just one skinny nut job. You can't take him out?"

She laughed a little and the pain in his head began to dull, to deaden, and then finally to become a nothing more than an annoying ache that was easily ignored. What in the hell was in that salve? He rolled his tongue over his teeth and could almost FEEL his skull knitting together. But that was impossible…wasn't it?

"Here," Her hands moved under the edges of his shirt hem, "Let's get this off and take a look at the rest of ya."

He obeyed and she pulled the shirt over his head. His chest was a series of bruises, scrapes, and one nasty gash over his left pectoral. Zoe shook her, hissing. "You fought hard before he got you. I wasn't wrong, you might just have what that other bastard lacked."

"Other bastard? The dead guy in the corner?"

"No."

"The clown? I hate to tell you but he…lost the game." He felt his throat tighten up at the mention of it. She watched his face, curious.

"I'm sorry for that. I know how awful that must have been. I wish I could have gotten to you sooner but I had to wait for the right timing. I needed Lucas distracted. And the other guy…he was never gonna make it out of that game." Zoe began to touch the salve to his chest, slowly, gently, "He was your friend?"

"I don't remember." He said it softly. "I don't remember anything."

She lifted her eyes and he noticed, in the flickering lantern light, she had long, beautiful lashes. She was a gorgeous bit of a thing, objectively speaking. Her shaggy hair was poorly cut as if she'd taken careless whacks at it with kitchen shears but didn't detract from the beautiful bone structure she possessed. She was fine boned, thin, and looked a bit like she'd been starving for awhile. She needed some weight on her, sure, but if she'd lived in this shit hole afraid and alone for a long time, he doubted she was worried about anything more than enough food to survive. He focused on the pretty features of her face to distract himself from the horror of the situation. She looked tired with dark circles ringing her steely gray eyes and determination was etched into face which he appreciated given their hopeless situation.

"I figured he'd gotten you with some of that mindwash shit he's always messing with." Zoe shook her head, angry now, "He couldn't let you best him after all. And you would've if you'd been…ya know…yourself."

She pressed the salve to his open gash and he hissed a little before the cooling set in. "S'rry."

"It's ok. What other guy were you talking about?"

"Ethan." And now the anger on her face was very real and very bright. "I helped em. I did everything I could t' help em. And the bastard took the vaccine, gave it to his damn wife, and ran away."

She shook her head, her brow furrowed. "I thought that was it, ya know? I thought I was doomed to rot here forever until the change took me and I became…like them. Like her."

Zoe shuddered and was surprised when he put a hand on her arm in support. She met his eyes. "And then…you got off that chopper. You put them on that chopper and it took them away…and you…you stayed. Why?"

He held her gaze. "I don't know."

"It will come back, your memory. The effects aren't forever." Zoe was absently rubbing his chest now with the salve, not really paying attention. As the effects of it started to work to maximum effect, she tried to imagine the face beneath all the swelling. Would it resemble the commanding man who'd stepped off that chopper? "I wish I knew more to tell you. I can tell you that you came off a chopper with this symbol."

She leaned over to grasp her notebook and show him. The symbol was vaguely familiar but meant nothing to him. She studied his face, looking for recognition. "Anything?"

"Nothing."

"You had a patch on your uniform that you'd been wearing. It said BSAA. I don't know what that is either. But that must be who you work for."

"Yeah…" He closed his eyes, trying to find any snatch of memory but there was nothing.

"The other man who was with you at the chopper. He called you Chris."

"Chris."

"Yeah. Chris. And you called yourself Redfield. Chris Redfield."

Chris Redfield. That was his name. Chris Redfield.

He rolled the sound of it around in his head and it meant nothing. It meant even less than Hero had meant. He didn't know who Chris Redfield was any more than he knew who she was. Both were a mystery.

He met her eyes. "I took this Ethan away?"

"Yes. You took him and his wife, Mia Winters."

"Who were they to you?"

She told him a tale of a wrecked ship, of a little girl. She told him of a nightmare that had taken her entire family and turned it into a mad race for survival. She told of mutation, creation, of hunger and blood. She told of their rapid descent into chaos. Her family began to hunger for flesh, they began to feed on the living, and they began to murder and experiment. And the girl, the girl began to thrive. She invaded their dreams, their minds, she was looking for a "family" and began to unleash beasts and creatures and horror.

She told of Ethan's arrival, three years later when it seemed all hope was lost. She'd had hope, briefly, that she would finally be free. She'd hidden for so long, running and hiding, and running and hiding. She was losing pieces of herself daily now, starting to feel the hunger after all this time, she was tired and lost and had all but given up.

"He chose her. He chose Mia. After all I did for him. And I watched them float away…I knew that it was over. And I was going to end up lost…I wasn't afraid to die. Not after all this time..but to end up like them… I'm not ready…." Zoe put her face in her hands and began to weep, softly.

He wasn't aware of having moved but he did. He crouched on the floor in front of her. His hands cupped her face, his thumbs sweeping at her tears. She moved in against his chest and folded there. It had been so long since someone had held her. She'd been so afraid for so long. She let the shallow falsehood of his protection wash over her, pretending, just for a moment, that she was finally safe.

The beat of his heart was slow and steady, comforting in the silence as her weeping subsided. She leaned back, sniffling a little. "I'm s'rry."

"It's alright."

Zoe swiped at her tears with her palms. "I need your help, Chris Redfield. I don't have any one else. Help me and I'll help you."

He looked into her face and something in him recognized her. Something in him understood that despair and desperation. Something in him knew he was meant to help. "You already did. How can I say no to that? But I gotta warn you, anything I might have known is gone. I'm not a hero. I'm just some regular dude with nothing to lose."

"That's alright. So was Ethan. It turns out "regular dudes" are the best kind of hero."

He slipped his t-shirt on, a truly sad moment for her, and they rose. She hadn't looked at a man in so long. It seemed a million years ago that she'd been interested in boys and silliness. She wasn't even sure that she had the pieces of that girl left inside of her anymore. "So what do we do?"

Zoe moved to the small table and picked up a pistol. She offered it to him. He stared at her, drolly. "I can't use that."

"Yes you can."

"I don't remember how."

"Yes you do."

He took it but the doubt on his face was obvious. She showed him a series of pictures in the lantern light. "Ethan made the serum from a D-series head and arm."

"A what?"

Zoe laughed a little. "It'll take way too long suga' to catch ya up on ev'rythin. We gotta move quick. That little peeschwank brutha of mine won't be far behind us. The sho't version of that story is that we need to find us a very small mummified corpse. I have the arm, the head is a bit of a problem."

Chris stared at her face in the flickering light. A few moments passed. "Ok. I just played Russian Roulette with a madman, woke up with no memory, and now I'm off to find a mummified corpse. Sure. Right. All of this…totally sane. Add in the fact that I'm pretty sure you rubbed goop on my head and fixed my fractured skull and the whole thing just makes boat loads of sense."

"It's called willing suspension of disbelief suga'. And we don't have no time fo' yeh to be fallin' apahr't. So I need yeh to table that break down, ok?"

"Right. No break downs. Got it."

Zoe slipped through the shadow and picked up the lantern. "Let's go. I think I know where t' start lookin."

They slipped out into the humid night. He was able to focus now and noticed everything. His eyes did something that his mind wasn't quite as quick to understand. In a few moments, he charted a path through the soggy darkness as if he were a human compass. Again, his instincts told him he had some skill, some training but he wasn't sure what good it did him to not be able to channel any part of it.

At least the instinct was enough to hopefully help keep him alive.

They wound in between trees, making a slow, steady, zig zag through the bayou. He could hear the song of the bugs, smell the musty wetness of the earth, he was aware of the line of trees in the distance and able to understand the terrain. In that moment, he knew he could run, right here, in the dark, and not fall down. He was something when his brain wasn't half asleep and that something was pretty impressive.

Was he a good guy? A bad guy?

It was impossible to know.

Zoe led them through a thicket of over grown brush. There was a rusty peel of metal as she pushed open a gate. A series of jagged, broken stone stairs descended downward through the darkness. A breeze rustled at his hair as they came around a corner to find the wreckage of what had clearly once been a very large ship. It was half marooned on the swampy ground it had run up upon. It bobbled in the forgotten, filthy, tepid water uselessly and forlornly.

"There's a mummified corpse on that ship?"

"Not exactly." Zoe led him toward the waiting vessel. It was clearly military grade. Huge and armored, it was no cruise ship. This wasn't a ship that had housed vacationers looking to tour the southern islands. This ship had been led here with purpose and what it carried had been precious. "There's a mummified corpse in the lab."

"Where's the lab?"

"Under that ship."

"You mean in it?"

"Not exactly." She said again. She beckoned to the sad little row boat that waited to take them to the ship to board. He sighed and climbed in, using the oars to move it toward their destination.

He watched her face as they rowed. She was nervous. It was clear in the way she bit her lip and twisted her hands in her lap. He reached out a hand and put it over hers.

Surprised, she met his eyes.

"It'll be alright."

What was it about him that comforted her? She believed him. She wasn't sure why. It was kinda ridiculous to believe a man she'd never met before. A man who had amnesia and was possibly a bad guy. A man who could smother her with one very, very, very muscled arm.

But what choice did she have?

Take a chance on him, or die. And she'd never been a quitter.

He rowed the boat to the rusted wall of the ship. Bracing it there, he helped her grabbed the rung of a half broken ladder and boosted her up to help her climb it. She reached the top and turned back to look down at him. "Now what about you?"

Chris judged the distance. "See if there's something up there you can throw down to me."

"Like a rope?"

"Yeah. So I can get to the ladder at least."

"Ok. Hold on."

She disappeared from view. He waited, nervous, his eyes darting from one end of the skyline to the other. Something shivered in the distance. Was it wind? Was it a mummified corpse? Was it Superman?

"Shit." He said it softly and with feeling. What kind of freak show had he stepped into?

"Hey!" She called softly and tossed down a heavy but fraying length of cable. "This is from the anchor. I think it'll hold ya. Course…not sure if it's made to hold that much weight."

His face was very droll. "You sayin I'm fat?"

She'd seen the body under that shirt. Fat was not the right word. She smiled at him coyly though. "Not fat so much as…he'vy."

He mimicked her accent, "He'vy?"

"Yeh know…stocky."

The look on his face as priceless. It was very, very dry. "That's a nice word for chubby."

Zoe laughed a little and waved her hand at him. "Come on, yeh silly man."

Fat, she mused, and watched his muscles bunch as he grabbed the cord and started climbing. No. Not fat. He was sheer muscle. Big, yes, but not an ounce of fat on him. He was clearly a brawler, a powerhouse.

Zoe grabbed him under the arms as he levered himself up and grunted, pulling with all her might. He stumbled a little and she did as well. He grabbed her to steady her.

"Yeah," She chuckled, "He'vy."

Chris smirked. "Brat."

Zoe moved across the deck of the ship toward the hatch that would take them into the bowels of it. She tossed a smile over her shoulder at him as she went and her eyes sparkled. She felt something in her belly that she hadn't felt in a long time. It was odd to feel it, here, in the middle of this nightmare. It had been so long, years, since she'd felt even remotely human. This little flirting was giving her a kind of hope that was almost crippling to feel.

Chris moved after her, scanning the trees in the distance. "So once we get this…head. What do we do with it?"

"I'll use to make a serum. The serum…it's the only shot I've got to get this…thing outta mah body." She turned to look at him. "Before I become…somethin' else."

Chris opened his mouth to say something and the ship groaned; a whining metal squeal. He took a step, Zoe raised her hand to say "DON'T" and the words were lost under the collapse of the floor beneath him. She gave a shout as he disappeared into the crumbling, jagged, rusted floor.

"Chris!"

Inside the ship, Chris grunted, unceremoniously dumped on a pile of old, moldy sheets. Luckily it had absorbed his fall. He rose slowly, sore but alright, and pulled a rusty piece of metal from where it had lodge in his bicep. The pain was sharp and immediate; he hissed between his teeth and slapped a hand over the weeping wound.

"I'm ok!" He saw her face appear in the opening above. "I guess I was heavy after all."

Zoe laughed a little. "I'm comin down."

He watched her little legs and then her butt appear as she climbed backward through the hole. He put his arms up and down she came, dropping into his weight grip. He grunted, catching her smoothly in a cradle motion. "Who's heavy now?"

Zoe slapped his arm. He hissed and she drew back a hand that was wet with blood.

"Careful, damn."

"What did yeh do?"

"I stabbed myself, clearly."

She put her hand over his arm to staunch the blood. "Put me down, yeh great oaf. Let me look at it."

He set her on the floor and she glanced at the oozing wound under her hand. She sighed, shaking her shaggy head at him. "You're a bit of a clumsy thing, suga', I swear. I wonder what you did before all this."

Chris laughed a little, wincing while she bound up his bicep with a torn piece of his own shirt. "Who knows? Maybe I was an accountant."

Zoe smirked, looking at him wryly. "And all these rippling muscles were for what? To help you during tax season?"

Chris laughed again, shrugging. "You ever seen somebody when they have to pay back the IRS? They make your psycho brother look like a drooling baby."

Zoe stepped passed him and moved gingerly through the wreckage of the ship. It was clearly what had started life as a rather ornate dining room. The remains of red, plush carpet sunk beneath her ragged little shoes as she moved. Chris paused to watch her. She was something; a girl who'd hidden, scared and alone, fighting to survive for years while her family raged and waged war on her sanity, while they murdered and maimed, while they tried to take her down into the darkness with them.

She was a girl who trusted a stranger to help her find her way out of that darkness. Even in the midst of what had to be the worst situation possible: robbed of his memory, abandoned alone in an unfamiliar wasteland, at the mercy of a murdering psychopath and apparently monstrous mutated creatures, having her there with him made him feel just a little bit less like the most unlucky man on Earth. He meant what he'd told her, he was going to do his damnedest to get them out of this alive.

They moved together to push open a rusty set of doors beside the wreckage of the dining room. It opened to a dense, damp, moldy hallway that was as dark as pitch. Zoe lifted the lantern she carried, casting a flickering beam of light through the encompassing dank. She shivered beside him when a gust of cold, fetid air pushed against their entrance into the dark.

He whispered now, close to her ear, "I hope you're right about this."

"Me too."

They moved into the hallway together. The rusty door behind them sealed shut with a low clang of metal. And just like that, they were sealed off from escape. Nothing to do now, he mused, but go on.

The hallway was narrow and long, the ship was unsteady at best, listing to one side drunkenly and bobbing a bit where the starboard side had failed to maroon on the land. Their footsteps seemed loud in the silence, broken only by the rapid catch of breath and movement. Pictures hung haphazardly, often crookedly, on walls with peeling paint and black mold. The ship hadn't handled the Louisiana humidity well in the three years it had sat rotting, it was bloated and bowed from water infiltration, where the wood and the metal met, a rusting and rotting had occurred, creating a perilous path of broken, breaking, and dangerous conditions.

Zoe stopped to glance down at her notebook with the lantern before she tucked it again back in the butt pocket of her skinny jeans. Chris took note that her left shoe had duct tape that doubled as the side, clearly having fallen apart at some point since she began living like a frightened, desperate thing. She glanced up at him, "The last time I was here, it was infested with creatures. But the elevator panel was loose and I left it that way on purpose so that when and if I ev'a needed to come back, I wouldn't hav'ta pry it loose again."

She ducked into the open elevator as she spoke, squatting down to wiggle at the panel in question. Broken pieces of glass were strewn across the floor and an over turned lamp lay dejectedly close by. There was old dried blood splashed up one wall of the elevator and a crusty bloody hand print laid rather cleanly against the panel that Zoe carefully pried open.

She glanced at him and then at the open area created when she removed the panel. A few moments ticked by and she sighed. "Ok. We have to squeeze through here…not sure you'll fit."

"Ah." He handed her the pistol and crouched down, "Only one way to find out."

Chris grasped the wall and slid through the opening with barely an inch to spare; he dangled over the edge for a moment and dropped to the floor beneath. The fall was less then graceful and he made an "oomph" sound as he landed. "Father than it looks man."

Zoe came through behind him and he caught her as she dropped against the front of his body. He held her a second longer than he probably should have before he let her go. Her cheeks were a little pinkened in the lantern light.

She cleared her throat a little, "Um…this way."

This hallway was strewn with corpses but not corpses the way he'd expected. The things that littered the ground had never been human. They were blackened, wizened, with tendrils of curling inky limbs and jagged teeth. They were bubbled up nightmares made from tar or something. It was hard to piece together what they'd resembled when they'd been "living". In death, they were mostly alien in nature, resembling something one would expect to find a science fiction novel.

Zoe drew a small silver key from her hip pocket as they came upon a locked door. It was the only door still closed in the long, long hallway. It was made from impenetrable steel and had claw marks across it as if something had desperately tried to get in. Blood splatters littered the bottom and a few bullets were lodged in the steel.

She pushed the door open with a turn of the key and he found himself following her into a room lit by a dull, eerie red glow of emergency lights. It made the room surreal to view it through a bright red filter. It was as if the entire thing were seen through a haze of blood and death.

A lab, clearly, with incubators and test tubes filled with gelatinous mutations and dead faces. Human heads were sustained with in liquid behind the glass surfaces, their faces frozen forever in their moment of death. Fetuses floated grotesquely, rolled into tiny baby balls that would never feel the sun of their face. Vials were over turned across table tops, papers were strewn carelessly about, charts lined the walls with formulas and calculations and equations.

Zoe moved quickly to one of the test tubes with a mummified baby inside it. She gestured, excitedly. "See why I locked the door? See? I knew there'd be one left. Lucas is so stupid. He thought that one I had was the only one. If he'd have known what was here, right here, under his damn nose this whole time. He'd shit himself."

She pressed a button on the front of the tube and the capsule hissed, depressurizing. The liquid inside the tube drained away into the bottom of the container and the side opened, revealing the tiny mummified baby like some putrid prize. Zoe grasped it, taking its slimey countenance to the table beside her to find something to secure it. She picked up a backpack from the floor and emptied out the various things inside it before she carefully tucked the ugly baby inside.

"What now?"

She met his eyes, looping the straps of the backpack over her shoulders. "Now we go get the arm and make the serum."

"Where's the arm?"

She opened her mouth to answer and the ship pitched hard to one side. They both were tossed over, smashing into the far wall with the force of it. Chris rolled over the table as he went, coming down hard on the floor when he landed. The stillness that followed lasted only a moment before the chaos started.

An alarm began to blare, loud, awful, and horrible. A mechanical voice came over the rusted but still functioning speakers somewhere in the ceiling. "Internal compartment pressure compromised. Water infiltration on subdeck 3 at 98%. Subdeck 2 compartment pressure compromised. Water infiltration on subdeck 2 at 25%. Please evacuate immediately. Time to capsize: ten minutes."

Chris grabbed her arm and they rose, quickly. "I'd say that means we better run."

"Yes."

They ran toward the far door and pushed through it into the hallway. "Where?"

She gestured, "The back escape hatch. HURRY!"

They ran and something behind them began roaring. The blaring alarm was punctuated by the thunder of running feet now as it began to pursue them. And the warning voice was cut off by a maniacal burst of laughter.

"Zoe! You bitch! That's my toy you're playing with! I'm gonna kill you when I find you!"

They reached the end of the hallway and the ship pitched again, harder. With barely a second to decide, Chris grabbed her to him as they were tossed, sliding along the wall as the ship turned the floor beneath them into a ceiling. The entire vessel rolled and they smashed into the wall, the floor, the ceiling and skittered along as it bobbled and jerked like a cork in water.

The thing chasing them was tossed about as well, roaring in denial. Chris came to a stop when the rolling settled down. And he caught his first glimpse of their pursuer. It was black and had a wide open screaming mouth with razor sharp teeth, it had arms made of elongated razor sharp claws and was at least eight feet tall.

He finally understood why Zoe hadn't slept in three years.

He pushed her behind him toward the door. "Go! Run!"

"Don't be stupid!" She jerked him into the run with her, "That thing will gut you!"

They hit the far door together and pushed through. For a moment, when they cleared the door, he thought they'd made it and that they were going to be safe. And then he realized that less than a foot beyond the door, the floor was completely torn away and had collapsed.

The decision was made for them as the monster chasing them burst through the door behind them. Zoe screamed and the world slowed down, froze, and snapped back at full speed as it shot out one of those arms and hit him clean across the chest.

The impact lifted him up and threw him out, airborne, Chris had no time to do anything but collapse around his own pain as he fell down into the darkness, down, down. The water rose up to meet him, wet and cold. It absorbed his body and cushioned his landing. He sank down into the cold and tried to decide if he was broken or not.

His arms moved, his legs moved, and he swam up and surfaced, sputtering and gasping for air. Everything still worked so he was bruised, not broken. He caught sight of the ship, watching in horror as it listed, listed, bobbing drunkenly in the water. It was going to sink, less than a fourth of it was still above the water and the part that was illuminated the night. It was on fire. It was blazing and the heat of it licked the heavens with tongues of furious light.

The thing had inadvertently saved his life by hitting him. It had tossed him clear of the explosion without knowing it. He bobbled in the water, spinning, searching desperately for some sign that Zoe was with him or near him or close by. He called her name but his voice was hoarse and lost under the sound of the blazing fire. The ship groaned, loud and metallic, and snapped in two beneath the force of its own weight. It crashed down into the water and the force of the waves pushed him up and out, sending him spiraling farther from the wreckage.

By the time he surfaced again through the rush of the water, grabbing a log to anchor him and hold on, the blazing fire was gone, the ship finally having lost the battle to age and destruction and sunk down into the depths of the waiting bayou. Only a few trails of smoke remained, swirling through the sky like inky snakes.

Chris pushed toward the shore, cold and tired, sore and frightened. He gained his feet in the soggy marsh, looking for some sign of Zoe. He didn't dare call out now; too afraid of what lurked in the darkness beyond. He moved a little toward the far line of trees, retracing his steps back the way they'd come.

He heard a sound, close, too close. He turned but he knew he'd be too late. Too fucking late.

The blow took him off his feet. It caught him at the chin and split the skin, spilling blood onto the boggy ground. He went onto his back, skidding through the mud and filth.

"You BASTARD!" The maniac was there. Skinny, tall, with crazy eyes in the shifting darkness. "You are NOT BEHAVING! This IS MY GAME! MY GAME!"

The shovel in his hands came down and missed Chris by a millimeter as the other man rolled, scrambling to his feet to avoid losing his head. Lucas jerked the shovel from the ground, wielding it above his head. "Why couldn't you just STAY PUT?! You and that bitch Zoe!"

Chris staggered, turned, he faced his attacker, backing up with his hands in front of him. "I never did anything to you man. I don't know what the hell is going on here but you don't have to kill me. Put the shovel down and go home. It's that easy."

"You big HERO. Always think you know everything. You took Ethan AWAY. I wasn't done with him! You had to take his place. It's only fair!"

The shovel came down again and Chris threw himself to the left, hitting the ground on his stomach but missing another attempt to take his head off his shoulders. The shovel struck the ground again, ringing loudly in the humid night air.

"Zoe thinks she can escape what we are. What we're meant to be…but she can't! This power…it's amazing! It's a gift!"

Chris scrambled to his feet again and this time he didn't wait, he started running. The maniacal laughter chased him into the trees. "You think you can RUN?! You think I won't find you! I AM THESE WOODS! I AM EVERYTHING!"

Chris stumbled, tripped, he kept running. He felt the panic claw up his throat in desperate swipes as he burst out of the trees into an open yard. A decrepit barn sat forlornly open, looking wan and ramshackle in the eerie white moonlight. He ran toward it and didn't stop until he'd found what he needed.

The barn doors were kicked upon with great force behind him and Lucas came through them, wielding the shovel with that squealing, peeling laughter. "BOO!"

The barn was empty.

He turned, turned again, looking at the empty barn with surprise. He'd seen him run inside. He had to be here somewhere. The barn was only so bi-

"Boo." Dangling upside down from the beam directly above him with just his legs, Chris drove the pitchfork in his hands into that surprised face. It burst out the other side of that skull in a wash of brains and blood. Lucas wailed, dropping the shovel, stumbling manically around as blood spurted and sprayed. His face was bisected by three prongs of the pitchfork, his eyes completely destroyed.

Chris dropped to the floor and moved back against the wall, watching. It wasn't going to kill him, that was clear. But it evened the playing field a little. He picked up the shovel.

"I'M GONNA KILLL YOU!" Lucas grabbed the handle of the pitchfork and jerked it out of his face, spraying blood like a geyser as he did. "I'm gonna use this pitchfork to fuck you to death!"

Chris hefted the shovel like a baseball player and swung, smashing it into the other man so hard that the force radiated up his arms. Lucas was lifted up and tossed, hitting the wall of the barn so hard that the rafters shook and the building groaned at the assault.

"You stupid bastard!" Lucas scrambled blindly now to get to his feet, his ruined jaw could still make sounds but it resembled garbled nonsense. "I'm gonna start with Zoe! I'm gonna rip off her face and use it to wipe mah ass!"

The maniac was an idiot. Insane, clearly, and sort of psychotically brilliant when it came to torture but he couldn't fight worth a shit and, even when bested, didn't know how to stop running his stupid mouth. "You think you can kill me!? You can't kill me! I DON'T DIE!"

"Well I guess we're gonna find out." The shovel whistled as he brought it down, hard and fast. It bisected that head from the ugly neck beneath it cleanly and quickly and embedded in the wall beyond. The head rested, ruined and macabre, atop the metal scoop, staring blindly from its ruined eyes. Lucas's body twitched, frozen for a moment by nerves and muscle memory, and collapsed to the floor, spastically thrown into a death spasm as it spurted and squirted blood from its ruined neck.

Chris grabbed that head by the hair and hefted it like a trophy; he jerked the shovel free from the wall, and brought it and the head with him out into the swamp. He dropped the head onto the ground, lifted the shovel above his own and brought it down. He wasn't sure how many times he smashed that skull. He watched it burst like a ripe melon, watched it squirt and squish and ooze brains and blood and skin and bone. He reduced that face to a ruined pile of mush.

His arms were aching, his breathing was heavy and fast, he was sweating. Chris dropped the shovel. In the light of the moon, he looked horrifying. He was covered in blood and gore, filthy, sweaty and gross. But he was alive.

He returned to the barn to get the body. It was twitching on the floor. He knew, staring at it, that it wasn't over. That even in complete dismemberment, that body would reknit, regrow, and rise again to torture. But he couldn't just stand there and watch that happen.

A search among the pockets of Lucas' hoodie turned up a box of matches and a cell phone. He pocketed the phone and set the matches aside as he worked.

Chris spitted that twitching body on the prongs of the pitchfork like an ugly shishkabob. He used his body weight to drive the prongs deep into the floor like an anchor. Mounding up the hay around the body, he set about building a haphazard funeral pyre. Before he set a match to his work, he divested the corpse of its boots.

Zoe burst from the trees to see the barn ablaze. She limped forward, favoring her wounded leg. The explosion from the ship had thrown her up and out and she'd come to bobbling in shallow water a hundred yards away. The ship was gone, the backpack was still on her back, but Chris…Chris was gone.

Horrified, she'd tried to find him. She was so afraid he was dead. She'd heard Lucas yelling and followed the sound of it.

And now…this.

"Oh gawd," She stumbled, limping quickly, toward the blaze. "Chris! CHRIS!"

"If you keep yelling, you're going to wake the dead."

She nearly peed herself in fear when he answered. She grabbed her chest in fright and stumbled. He caught her, holding her upright.

"You're alive." They said it simultaneously.

And then smiled.

He looked horrid. She looked worse.

"You got that ugly baby?"

She nodded.

"I killed your brother."

He said it so succinctly. He said it like he'd said, "The sky is blue." Just matter of fact. No remorse. She nodded and felt nothing but relief.

"He died a long time ago. What you killed…needed killin'."

"I'm sorry."

She met his eyes, held them. "I'm not. Let's go."

"Wait…"He lifted the boots up in his hand. She stared at him for a long moment, watching the shift and play of firelight across his features. He'd killed her brother and stolen her shoes.

"You stole me boots."

"I stole you boots."

She wasn't sure what to say to him. She wasn't even sure how she felt about that. She knew only that something in her shifted and shifted hard at the knowledge that in the middle of everything, of trying to stay alive, of running and trying to find his memory- he'd taken the time to steal a pair of boots for her. He hadn't even known if she was alive at that point.

She kicked off her ratty shoes and he helped her secure the boots around her feet. They were a little large but easily knotted to stay on. The feeling of real shoes again was almost orgasmic. She laughed a little and the blazing fire reflected in the tears in her ears.

"Don't," He said it softly, skimmed a knuckle over her cheek, "They're just shoes."

"They're not just boots. They're so much more than that."

Something loud echoed now in the distance and the moment between them was ruined by a rush of adrenaline.

"We need to move."

"Yes."

This time it was her arm around his shoulders as they moved. They moved quickly across the boggy ground, never stopping to do more then take a breath. When they were back inside her hidey hole, she struck up the last of her lanterns and moved to her tiny table to begin making the serum.

"Will this work?" He watched her, catching glimpses of the stark desperation on her face.

"I dunno. But it's all I got." She lifted the little glass of goo she held and showed it to him. "This is it. This is the only chance I've got."

"What will happen when you drink it?"

"Maybe I die. Maybe I live. Maybe nothing happens at all. If it don't work…if I turn…will you…" She trailed off, watching him.

"I will."

"Promise me."

"I swear."

Nodding, she breathed deep, and drank the goo.

At first there was nothing but quiet and then she stumbled and he lifted a hand, hesitated, and then took her shoulders in his hands. She met his eyes and something sharp and painful passed over her face. She started to convulse and fell against him.

He lifted her, easily, carrying her convulsing body to lay her gently on the mattress on the floor. He held her down there, feeling the icy tendrils of panic in his gut as he watched helplessly. She bowed, jerked, and her mouth opened to scream. He gathered her in now and put his hand over her mouth.

"Shhh…Zoe…"

She went still against him, breathing deeply. A long moment passed before he realized she was sleeping. Something settled inside of him and the fear, edged raw and ugly, eased back to a bearable ache. He laid back on the mattress, her small body curled against his side. She shifted closer, draping her leg over his, her hand curled into his shirt and held there. He shifted his arm around her shoulders and held her against him.

The lantern had gone out when his eyes opened. It was nearly pitch dark in the room and he was alone on the mattress. He shifted in the darkness, wondering what time it was and how much had been lost to the needs of the body to sleep. He was sore but alive, feeling the bruises in his chest and shoulders where adrenaline had worn off and pain had set in to remind him he was human.

A soft sound close to him drew his rapt attention. He waited, breathing slow and steady, and his voice seemed very loud in the dark, "Zoe?"

The sounds shifted closer and he closed his eyes. If she'd turned, if she wasn't Zoe anymore…he wasn't sure what to feel about that. He wasn't sure he could kill her. Could he?

"Chris…"

The panic and fear of what he might have to do to her release like a burst bubble. The sudden absence of it nearly caused him to collapse. Their fingers touched in the darkness and he shifted his palm, laced his hand with hers, and pulled her in.

She let him. She came against him in the dark, pulled across his lap. He found her face with his hands and held it, her hands curled around his forearms and gripped him.

"It worked?"

"It worked."

"Thank god."

She made some sound and collapsed against him. He wrapped his arms around her and held, feeling the rapid thunder of his heart and her own. They sat that way for a long moment, curled around each other.

"Zoe?"

"Yes."

"Is Lucas dead?"

He felt her shiver against him. "I don't know. But we have to get out of here. And there's only one way to make it to safety. We have to go through the mines."

"The mines?"

"Yes. It was always an escape route if something were to happen. Daddy…he was a survivalist, ya know? One of those types that always plotted for the end of the world. I don't think he could have possibly known what would happen here but his paranoia, his stock piling and planning…it probably saved my life this whole time. The less they remembered who they were, the more I was able to out maneuver them and use the resources he'd left to my purpose."

She shifted and they both got to their feet. A flicker of light later and the lantern was lit again. "The mines are the a direct route to the highway. If we try to go out in the dark now, cross through the fields or the forest….we'll ne'er make it. We have to chance the mines."

"Ok…let's head to the mines."

She paused at the door to the hidey hole and turned to face him. Her eyes settled on his face, danced over the dirt and the dried blood and the swelling. And she thought she'd never really know if he was handsome under all the damage. The glimpses she'd had of him previous hadn't told her much. And he'd been so badly fucked up since they'd met that she couldn't really tell if he handsome or not..

But in this moment he was beautiful. He'd saved her life. If they died escaping, at least she wouldn't die in service to anyone else. At least she'd die HERSELF.

He was watching the horizon over her, eyeing the distance and the darkness. She pressed a soft kiss to his mouth and he glanced down at her, surprised.

"Thank you. Whatever else happens…thank you."

He nodded a little, holding her gaze. "We're even now."

"Not even close."

And they set off into the darkness to face whatever waited for them down in the mines. And whatever would try to stop them from escaping. The only real question was if they'd make it….or if they'd die trying.


	2. The Hero Takes A Fall

II. The Hero Takes a Fall

DULVEY, LOUISIANA, 2017

The smell of damp and dark is a cloying thing. It spreads across the tongue and simmers in the mouth with a thickness like rotten honey. He felt like he was too big and the mines too small within the rock tomb that they entered.

He pulled a little against her hand as she started to lead him in. She turned, watching him, "Surely someone big as you are, can't possibly be a'fraid of a lil darkness."

"I seem to not like dark, closed in spaces."

"I don't know that anyone does really. But I'll protect you." She smiled coyly at him. He was charmed by her so he let her lead him in.

Someone was breathing too fast, too shallow. She pressed her hand to his chest and hefted the lantern to see into his eyes. "Chris?"

"Mm?"

"It's alright now. Look at me."

He realized the person with the panicking breathing was him. Her face was calm and gentle in the swaying firelight. "It's a'right now suga'. Breathe. And relax."

He took a few deep, calming breaths in and out. He gathered his resolve. He did NOT shit himself, so that was saying something. And he nodded.

"Ok. Let's do this."

She kept hold of his hand as she led him into the darkness. It closed around them, thick and tremulous. It brought a cool blast of tepid air against the skin that was still dewey from the sweat of the summer bayou. The stagnant stench of old water was lost against the cool relief that was offered.

She moved beside a mine cart, twining their hands together and holding tight. He was a little embarrassed at how afraid he was. He heard his voice say, loud in the quiet darkness, "Something bad must have happened to me in a mine."

"Are you rememberin'?" She met his eyes for a moment but he shook his head.

"No. I don't think so. Just trying to justify being a big baby."

She laughed and now she was charmed by him instead. She guided him to a wall and patted his big, muscled arm. Solid steel. She wanted to rub that arm and so she didn't. Instead she moved to the transformer against the far wall.

She fiddled with a few things and pulled a lever. There was a crackle of electricity – a snap, a pop, and the rest of the Rice Krispies sounds. Something snaked and blistered the ceiling in the distance with fire and light. And the world was lit up once more.

The shambling lights above the mine cart tracks all started to burst with electricity. The darkness was sent screaming as it was banished back into the cracks and crevices of cave and sky. He let out a rushing breath and felt like he'd just run five miles in the blistering heat.

"Better?"

He got his first glimpse of her in real light. She'd been ethereal, pretty but ghostly pale in the semi-darkness. In the light, she was softer and more real. Her eyes were a very startling gray surrounded by thick long lashes. Her skin was milk pale but there was a spill of freckles over her nose that was charming and made her look younger then he'd first thought she was. He studied her high cheekbones and the dark circles under her eyes and lifted his hand to brush a thumb against one as if he could wipe it away.

She was very still while he touched her. She was studying him too.

The swelling and bruising on his face still prevented her from telling if he was really handsome. Not that it mattered. He was big, almost overtly masculine. His hair was a good solid black littered with a few handsome strands of silver. She wondered how old he was. As if that really mattered either.

"I got food on mah face?"

He laughed and dropped his hand, shaking his head. "You're pretty. I hadn't realized how much until the lights came on."

And there was that. He was uncomfortably honest. She found it endearing.

"Well thank you."

"What about me?" He laughed but it had a harsh edge, "Am I passable?"

She met his eyes. They were blue. Very blue and under dark heavy brows. The jaw was strong and his nose a good patrician blade. He seemed to have good features under all the bruises. "I think you'll do."

He laughed again and they started moving. She led him to a mine cart and hefted herself inside. He blinked at her. "We going for a ride?"

"Yep." She pointed to the brake beside the track. "Mind?"

Chris grabbed the lever and pulled it. With a roar of rusty metal and a spark of steel, the mine cart snapped free. He jumped in with her and sat down, leaning back against the side. The cart moved, slowly at first, and then gaining speed until they were zipping along in a rickety, rocking ride toward what was hopefully safety.

Zoe had to lift her voice to be heard over the din of wheels and track. "These mines were built back in the coal miner boom. People really thought they'd find salvation down in these mines. They figured it would bring life back to Dulvey. All it did was create more reasons to avoid this town."

She sighed a little and staggered when the cart hit a bump. Chris grabbed her arm and pulled her down until she was sitting back against him, her back to his front. She was uptight at first but then relaxed, leaning her head against his chest.

After a few long moments, he realized she was sleeping. It didn't take long for him to do the same. The fatigue of the long day washed over them both and they slumbered, lulled into sleep by the steady sound of wheels and movement. Somewhat like a baby in a car seat.

The dreams chased him.

They fired through him exciting his brain and prompting him to remember. Remember, they taunted, remember. Remember what? Who was he? Where was he? What was he? Why was he here? REMEMBER, his mind screamed it now, REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE!

He opened his eyes.

The mine cart was still moving. Too fast…too fast it hurdled now like a thing possessed. He shook Zoe awake. "Zoe!"

She came awake alert and ready. He grabbed her to him. "Hold on!"

The cart was rocking too much. They were on a bridge overlooking a great burbling stream of some kind or a huge pit of useless water. It didn't matter. This cart was going to overturn. He rose, clutched her against his front like a child and saw the end of the track. It was going to drop off into…nothing. There was nothing beyond the edge of broken track but darkness.

He didn't wait, couldn't. He jumped and took her with him

She screamed, clutching at him. They plummeted, fast, faster, too fast. They hit the water like a bullet and sunk down, down, down. He held her close to him as they sank and rolled beneath the water. His shoulder struck rock, something scraped his back, and finally his head took a hit that knocked him cold.

He came to with her above him slapping his face. He rolled, vomiting water in a painful burst. She patted his back and scooped his hair back, holding him while he wretched.

"You scared the shit out of me!"

He grunted now, leaning back against the cave wall while he relearned how to breathe. "You got me out of the water?"

"Yes." She was feeling along his scalp. "You hit so hard. I was afraid it broke your neck."

Her voice wavered when she spoke. He couldn't quite open his eyes while his head roared with pain, so he blindly groped for her hands. He brought them to his chest and put them against it, having her feel his heart beat. It was slow and steady despite the distress to his body.

"I'm ok."

"I just…I thought…and you wouldn't…"

"Zoe?" His voice was steady and calm. "Look at me. Look. I'm ok. I'm fine. My head is hard as a rock. Clearly."

"You're bleeding, Chris. A lot."

"Heads do that I hear."

"Do you remember that from somewhere?"

"Probably. Who the hell knows. I'm ok. I swear."

She made some sound and curled onto his lap, putting her ear against his soaked shirt. He held her for a moment, breathing slowly. The pain in his head was awful, true. But it didn't feel dangerous. Not like before when he'd been sure he'd had a concussion. This just felt like a painful knock to the noggin.

"If you die…I don't know what I'll do."

"Zoe…"He breathed her name now, rubbing her back.

"I mean it, Chris. I mean it. I can't be alone again." And she sounded like a little girl. So lost and afraid.

"Then I guess I can't die on you. But sometimes, well sometimes I might have to leave you alone."

"Why?"

"Sometimes a man has to take a dump, Zoe. It's just the way things are."

She was so quiet for a long moment before she laughed, sort of quiet and desperate. She pulled at his face and he had an idea it was coming he just wasn't sure what to do about it. She kissed him, brushing her cold wet nose to his as their lips met. What the hell, he mused, why not?

He angled his neck down and kissed her back. She looped her arms around his neck and really laid one on him. His head was spinning when they separated. He wasn't sure if it was the knock to the noggin or the blood rushing to his head from that kiss.

"Whoa."

"Don't die."

"Don't feel much like dyin at the moment. Feel a bit like fuckin. But I think you might know that based on where you're sitting."

The silence was long and loud. And then Zoe started laughing.

"You idiot. You great idiot of a man."

"Is that your way of seducing me? I think your technique needs some work."

She kissed him again. It was smoother this time, softer, and sweeter. She pulled him to his feet. He swayed a little but stayed up right.

"Ok?"

"If I say no, will you kiss me some more?"

She laughed and swatted her hand at his chest. "No. No more kissing until we're safe."

"Promise?"

She could see each muscle in his stomach, each curve of his biceps, each line of steel in his back beneath that soaked and flimsy white t-shirt. She didn't care in that moment if he was married, gay, or the devil. When they were done with all this…she was going to do more then kiss on him.

"Oh yes. I have never meant anything more."

"Well in that case…" He jerked her along into a jog, "What are we waiting for?"

She laughed, delighted. How long had it been since she'd had fun? How long? His humor was infectious. It was wonderful. She wondered again what he was outside of this place. Was he serious? She doubted it. His humor seemed genuine and ingrained. She was betting even with his memory firmly in place, he was a wise ass.

The path over rock was narrow, forcing them to lean into the wall as they made their way toward the exit. At one point, the floor tried to crumble and they nearly plummeted into the abyss. She didn't breathe again until they were on the other side of the great divide.

"Are you sure this was the only way?"

He sounded so wry and sarcastic.

She laughed a little. "Nope. I just wanted to make you earn your freedom."

"Oh I'm earning it. I haven't worked this hard since…." His voice trailed off. "I don't know when. But I will eventually."

She turned and took his hand. "Chris…there's a chance you won't. Lucas was unpredictable at best. What if he's stolen everything from you..and you never get it back?"

He was silent for a long time while they walked. She wanted him to really think about what happened next for him. If there was no hope of finding out who he was, she wanted him to have some idea where he went.

"I have family."

He paused, looked down at her. "What?"

"I have family in Red River Parish. Bakers. My Daddy's cousin and his wife. They'd take us in. Bakers always take in Bakers. You could…you could come with me."

He squeezed her hand, touched. "You'd take in a brain dead fat ass like me? I wouldn't want to burden you like that."

She turned to him and her face said something that stole his breath. "You…you're not a burden. I don't know what I'd do without you. You could never feel that way to me."

He was staring into her face and didn't see it coming. It struck him hard along the side and his whole arm went numb. He turned, too slow, and Lucas swung the bat again.

"No!"

Zoe took the full hit this time. She leaped in the way as it came across in a swinging arc. It caught her in the belly and she collapsed to her knees, gasping for air.

"You son of a bitch!"

"Oh don't you worry, hero! There's plenty left for you!"

Lucas was too fast, too ready now. And Chris was down to one arm. He blocked the next swing but it was so hard that he heard the crunch of bone in his arm as it struck. The bat came again and he could only watch it as it came.

The world went white, red, and black.

He could smell gasoline as he opened his eyes. Not dead it seemed but close. He couldn't feel his arms. They dangled uselessly below his head. He was hanging upside down over the darkness. He could see the drip, drip, drip of blood from his arms. He could see that they were sliced open from elbow to wrist. His blood was dropping off into the darkness below him.

He could hear moaning, hear shambling, something in the darkness was hungering for his blood. He was dizzy and cold, his face was throbbing. He was shirtless in just his jeans. A St. Christopher medal brushed against his nose where it still hung around his neck. He glanced around, looking for something to help himself.

There was nothing. He was going to die here, slowly bleeding to death over a pit filled with…zombies? It sounded like horror movie zombies to him. There was a lot of gnashing teeth and shuffling down there.

The voice came out of the darkness. "Welcome back HEEEERO. I thought I'd killed you with that last hit. Sorry about that! But you sure pissed me off. You CUT MY HEAD OFF! THAT SHIT HURT! Naturally I couldn't just let you get away with it! But…since you didn't die…yet…I guess I should tell you we're playing a new game."

His voice came, weak and gravelly, "Zoe…"

"What's that? You worried about my sister? She's JUST FINE!" The spot light turned and flashed on the other person dangling above the pit. Zoe met his eyes with hers. She wasn't cut, wasn't bleeding. She looked terrified. She swung her body now, trying to get momentum to get to him.

"Oh god! LUCAS! YOU SON OF A BITCH! You let him go!"

"Well, that's just a TERRIBLE idea sis! If I do that, he'll fall right down into the zombies! Those fuckers are hungry! And he's bleeding!"

Zoe saw his arms and her face whitened. "What have you done to him!? What have you done!?"

"HE CUT MY FUCKIN HEAD OFF! What was I supposed to do? Slap his hand!?"

"Lucas, please! Please! He's dying! Can't you see that? He's dying!"

Lucas sighed loudly. "Well, we can't have that shit happening. That's no fun at all….what to do….oh shit. SHIT. I GOT it!"

The ropes began to lower Chris toward the zombies.

"NO!" Zoe screamed it now, desperate, "NOO! Lucas! Please! What do you want? WHAT!?"

"There we go! Now we get the idea…What do I want? You alive, hero?"

The world was foggy, edged with gray and white spots. It wouldn't be long, he wagered. He was drifting a little now outside of his head. But he answered. It sounded slurred like he was drunk, "I'm alive."

"You can live…but only if you can get tooooo….THAT!" The spotlight shifted and settled on a table. On it was a syringe. "Inside that syringe is a little gift. It's going to make you strong again. But it's also going to kill you. The moment you inject it, you've got twenty-four hours to find a cure. The problem is, the only cure is locked inside a vault at the bottom of these mines. There's a passcode to get in. I don't know it. She don't know it. But YOU DO. It's in your damn head. If I'd have known THAT before I wiped your memory, I wouldn't have done it. So I need you to remember who you are. And open that fucking door. If you do that, you'll get the vaccine and your life. What do you say?"

There was no choice here. None.

"Yes."

The ropes dropped, fast and vicious. It spilled them both to the floor in the middle of the zombies. "Good LUCK!"

Zoe scrambled as the sound of Lucas' retreat echoed through the mines. She grabbed for Chris and pulled. He was SO heavy that she yelled in his face, "Please! PLEASE! They're coming. Chris, please try. MOVE!"

He was so slow. So slow. He pushed weakly to his feet, bleeding all over himself now, so fast. So awful. She was making a sound in her throat as they moved toward the table. The dead were slow, yes. But they were hungry. And Chris was so very weak.

He tumbled down and Zoe jerked at him, all but dragging him toward the table.

She was crying now, softly. "Please. Chris. Please get up. Please!"

She left him. She had no choice. She ran for the table. Beside the syringe was a Glock, matte black and loaded. She snatched both and ran back toward Chris. The zombies were on him. He had one arm cross barred against a rotter who was trying to eat his face.

Zoe shouted and kicked it off of him. It rolled into four others, knocking them down like bowling pins. Chris was in a pool of his own blood, pale, nearly bloodless.

She drove the syringe into his chest like she was trying to hit his heart. She was. It jerked a cry from his mouth, bowed his body back, and she hit the plunger. The purple liquid swished into his body without remorse.

She whispered, "I'm sorry."

And he gasped, bowed, and died.

He died.

She felt the air blow out of his lungs. And he was still.

Motionless.

"No."

She shook him, hard. "No! WAKE UP!"

Fear gave her strength now as she jerked and pulled his lifeless body away from the advancing horde of zombies. She fired a shot with the Glock but it thunked uselessly into the mess of them. She was terrible with a gun.

There had to be eight or nine or fifteen of them. She couldn't tell anymore. Either way, she was about to become as dead as he was. She collapsed to the ground, weeping. So this was how it all ended. This was it. At least she wouldn't die one of THEM.

She put the gun to her temple.

"Let's not waste the bullet."

The world slowed down as he snatched the gun from her grip. She watched, open mouthed, as he turned it. He wasted no motion, wasted no movement, he started firing.

He didn't miss, didn't hesitate. I'm no good with a gun, he'd said. He was half right. He wasn't good, he was perfect. Each shift of his stance was precise, calculated. He drilled each advancing corpse between the eyes. He rattled off the whole clip and when it was empty, he moved.

She watched him as he charged. He kicked it in the knee, spilled it to the other, and broke its neck. The last one he dispatched by picking it up over his head and literally tossing it into the abyss surrounding them.

Silence surrounded them now, broken only by her ragged breathing.

He turned around and moved back toward her. She watched him, amazed. He knelt in the light and started checking her for wounds.

And then he looked up at her.

Yes.

She should have known.

He wasn't handsome. He was divine. There was something in the shift of his face that complimented the overtly masculine physique. Some angle of jaw, some line of nose spoke of a mixed heritage somewhere in his genes. Asian? Something. It didn't matter. He was gorgeous.

"You're alive."

He smiled and his face, so beautifully healed, so perfect. "Seems that way."

"You can shoot."

"Seems that way too."

She grabbed his arms, turned them in hers and checked for wounds. Nothing. He was indeed perfect from head to toe. "What's STARS?"

"I don't know."

She brushed the tattoo on the underside of his forearm. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"For what?"

"All of this, it's my fault."

"How so?"

"He's torturing you to teach me a lesson. I helped Ethan. I helped them all trying to escape. You're the only one who actually made it. He's going to kill you."

"We'll see," Chris rose, helping her to her feet. Shirtless, he looked like a wet dream. He flirted with the edge of being too big, too much. What had he been before this?

"The virus that he gave you…it's going to steal your sanity. It's what she gave us. It has to be. He's trying to get you to join him. Mama and Daddy are gone. He can't get me to join. He's going to try to get me through you."

"Let him try…all I know is right now, I feel better than I have since this all started. Let's try to get the vaccine and get the hell out of here. We'll deal with him when the time comes."

Zoe nodded and fell into step beside him. "The vault…I know where it is. It's where Daddy kept all of his survival gear. Lucas wrote the damn password down somewhere and lost it. Daddy flipped his fucking lid when he found out. He made Lucas put the password someplace more secure. So Lucas put it on his phone...Ethan found it. And I'm assuming he gave it to you."

"Great. One more damn thing I don't know."

They hurried down a rickety flight of steps. The tunnels split into three pathways, she led him down the left one at a near jog. "Are you cold?"

"Surprisingly no. I'm almost too warm."

Zoe nodded, worrying her lip. "That's the first stage. Incubation. You'll start to get hungry next. The hunger gets confusing. You want blood, you want…sex. You want anything that feeds the need. Be careful."

"How did you feed the need?"

She slowed, faced him, "At first?"

"Yeah."

"Sex," She shifted her eyes to his mouth, shook herself and kept moving, "It took the edge off. I'd run into town and pick up a biker, a trucker, a college boy. After awhile, the need was too great. I wasn't able to fill it anymore. I wanted blood. It scared me enough that I started with the goats. I'd slit their throats and keep the blood. It would last me for a couple weeks at a time. I was almost gone when you found me. I wanted to eat flesh so bad. I would claw up my arms and hands to try to get the need to go away."

"Jesus…I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It isn't your fault."

"Sometimes I'm sure I want sex that bad too. But I'm pretty sure a girl clawing me up would be a lot more fun."

She stopped and faced him, scanning his face. "Are you ever serious?"

"I don't honestly know."

Zoe started moving again, leading them deeper into the darkness. The walls closed in, sometimes so narrow they had to turn to the side. At one point, the water was waist high as they slogged through it. She went to one knee in the water and he lifted her against his front, moving against the rushing tide without a moment's hesitation.

She wrapped herself around him, putting her face in the crook of his neck and shoulder. He shouldn't smell so good. He should smell like blood and death and rot. He smelled like blood, sure, and sweat, and man, and life. He smelled amazing.

Later, Zoe would think ahout how she got herself into trouble. She put her teeth against his neck. She did that. She apparently didn't realize that they were in a life or death situation and that it wasn't a particularly good time to try to take a taste of her savior.

Sure, why not. Dying wasn't so bad after all.

She tasted him, suckling his skin into her mouth. She'd said he'd have the hunger. But she had it. She hadn't had a man in…her brain didn't even know. She had skin hunger. And sometimes that was worse than anything.

She drew back enough to see the hickey she'd left on him. He was a trooper, that was for sure, he kept right on moving through that water. And carried her out the other side. He hitched her up against him when they cleared the rising tide and she turned.

Yeah. She had it coming.

They kissed like they'd die if they didn't. She grabbed his hair and ate his mouth.

Their mouths made a popping sound when they came apart.

"Jesus."

He pressed her against the cave wall and ground his forehead against her breasts. She shivered, gasped, and clutched at him. He was like a man dying.

She shoved him away now and shook herself. "Wait. WAIT. I'm sorry. I want…I'm SORRY. This is so poorly timed there are no words."

He skimmed his hand over her breast through her flimsy tank top. He palmed her, thumbed her little nipple through the dirty cloth. She shivered and his eyes were wild, desperate. And not him.

She tried a calm voice first. "Chris…I'm sorry. I started this. It was stupid. Please look at me."

He shook his head at her and slid his hand under that dirty tank, palming her now on her naked flesh. He watched the power of it on her face. Yeah, he thought, that's what hunger looks like.

"Chris," Her voice was a little desperate now as he hooked his other arm around her back and drew her slowly to him, "Wait. We have so little time. We can't do this. Not now."

He switched his hand to her other breast, tweaking her now, squeezing. Her little breasts fit so perfectly in his hands. He was sure he'd die touching her. It was a good way to go. She resisted, feeling the first terrible thread of fear in her. This wasn't right. Any of it. Not what she'd done to him in the water, not this. This felt…wrong. Someone, somewhere was toying with them. Trying to get them to waste time here like this.

Lucas…bastard.

"Zoe..we're gonna die anyway. Let me have you." It sounded reasonable to him. Really. Why not die fucking? What a way to go. Made perfect sense.

"Stop…Chris…stop now." Her voice was hoarse. She pressed her hands against his chest to push him away. He drew one of them down and rubbed it over his swollen groin. The fear ate at the edges of her mind now, twisting like snakes in her belly.

She made some sound in her throat. Her other hand pushed at him still. "Chris…stop it. I mean it."

He shifted her hand against him, rubbing. He tried to pull her into him to kiss her.

When he couldn't get her to come closer, he looped his arm around her instead and jerked. She fell against him and his hands slid down the backs of her thighs and scooped. She grabbed at his shoulders as he lifted her around him again.

"No..wait!"

He pinned her to the wall and shoved his groin against her hard enough to hurt. She gasped and pushed at his chest. "Put me down! Damn you! This isn't you! STOP!"

He grabbed her slapping hands in one of his and pinned them above her head. His other hand jerked at his zipper. She struggled and the fear set in, fast and sharp. This is what happened when you played with fire, she thought desperately, he was so big. SO BIG. This wasn't going to end well.

He put his teeth against her throat and bit, gently, with an edge of desperation that scared her to death. She shook her head, panicking, frightened. This couldn't how this would happen. He wasn't even himself. He was a puppet to the thing inside of him.

Everything slowed down, lost focus. She watched him jerk with frustration at her pants. When he couldn't get to her that way, he growled. He growled. And he sounded like an animal.

He grabbed her to him with the force of ten men and slung her to the hard stones beneath. She hit, skidded over the cave floor, and tried to crawl away. He was there, flipping her to her back on the cold ground. She struck at his face, heard and felt the hit connect and ring up her arm with force. She hit hard enough to fell a lesser man.

He laughed, thick and dark and licked a wet line up the side of her throat to her face. Disgusted, she whimpered and tried to kick him away from her. He lifted her up and slammed her back down on the ground hard enough to make her teeth click together. If she kept fighting him, he was going to hurt her. But how could she just lay there and do nothing? She was drawn to him, god yes. But not this…not like this. This was wrong. And it wasn't HIM.

He crushed a kiss to her mouth and she whipped her head away. He growled again and squeezed her arms so hard she'd be bruised. She yelled, frightened. She slapped him across the chest, pushing at him. "Stop! PLEASE!"

He shook his head now like she was some annoying gnat in his ear. He jerked at her pants and they gave with a metallic rip. She fought, pushing, pulling. She grabbed at her pants to hold them to her. She would not die like this. She would not die like this. She would not let the thing inside of him rape her. No. She did not survive three years in this nightmare to be used like some fuck toy for her brother's twisted perversions. No. No NO. There was a way back. There had to be a way back for him. He wasn't like this. He was good, kind, gentle.

Gentle.

GENTLE.

She went still beneath him now and he jerked her pants free in a single motion, tossing them off into the darkness. He grabbed at her groin and ripped her panties off of her, making some sound in his throat. It was like a chattering of a thousand voices let loose from hell. The blue of his eyes had bled red at the corners. He grunted with crude pleasure at the sight of her naked from the waist down. She was so desperately afraid, terrified, but she was totally still. He could look. Looking was ok. It was ok. Looking wasn't grabbing.

She didn't fight, she waited. The fear was sharp and fast and painful in her chest. Hitting him and screaming seemed to spur him on. It seemed to excite him. He angled himself over her and yanked her legs apart when she wouldn't let him settle himself in between. She felt him run his hands up the inside of her legs now, over knees and up her thighs. Oh god. She was going to be raped on the soggy hard rocks of the mines where she'd played as a girl. She was going to be raped so her brother could teach her a lesson about obedience. She was going to be raped because some little girl had wanted a family and Zoe had wanted her freedom.

She'd drug him into this with her. And now he was trapped, a perverted puppet on the strings of a psychotic marionette. How could she save them? How could she save them both?

Zoe whimpered, softly. What could she do? What could she do?

He rose over her body to finish dropping his zipper. She was out of time.

She hooked her legs behind his ass and pulled. He collapsed over her, snarling. She cupped his face and drew it down to her.

"Shhhh. It's ok." The kiss was soft, butterfly soft. It landed on his eyelids, it landed on his nose. She kissed his cheeks and chin. She was crying now, softly, afraid. But she couldn't, wouldn't look into his face and see that thing in him while he raped her. She couldn't. She slid her hands over his shoulders, caressing him. She placed those soft kisses now on his forehead, his left ear. She kissed across his face to his mouth.

She pressed her lips over his and whispered, "It's ok. It's ok. I forgive you."

She was trembling so badly she was afraid she'd die from it. She felt his fingers curve around her upper arms and squeeze. He stopped shoving at her and was very still.

A fine trembling had started in him to answer hers. She slowly opened her eyes.

His were still red at the corners but very very him. He looked like a man on the verge of a breakdown. He looked like a man staring into the face of his own destruction. His voice came out, thick and heavy, so deep it was nearly impossible to hear, "Move. Zoe. Slowly please."

He let go of her arms. He stayed there, on all fours above her as she moved. She wiggled out from beneath him. He watched her, watched her body, watched her naked parts as she moved. But he didn't touch her. She could see the strength it took for him to hold totally still.

"Oh my god…I'm sorry."

"No. Chris. It's not you." But she was crying from the fear of him now. Crying from the horror of what had nearly happened. She grabbed her pants and held them to her chest, watching him, the cold wet fabric sealing off some of her fear. "I should have known. I shouldn't have done what I did. I forgot…I just..it had been so long since I'd touched someone…I forgot…"

"Christ…don't. Don't make it your fault. I don't know what's happening to me."

"I know," She sounded so sorry for him now, "I know you don't."

"How do I stop it?"

"You can't. You have to sate it. You have to give it something."

"I need something to kill." He said it so matter of factly, so simply. She laughed a little and was surprised to do it.

"Maybe. I think I saw a fish out there. You think that would work?"

His laugh was harsh and so pained. "What the hell do I know? Put the pants on Zoe. I'm about to lose it here."

She shifted to slip her pants on and hesitated. She looked at him kneeling there on the ground. He wouldn't make it. He would try his damnedest and lose to the thing inside of him. He had to give it something.

"I can help you." She moved to him and looped her pants around his hands. She tied them together. "You have to trust me."

"You know I do." The red had bled farther across his eyes now, turning them purple in places. It was beautiful and frightening.

"You have to give it something. Blood, violence, sex. It needs something." Her hands moved over him, skimmed along his pecs and stomach. He made some sound.

"It's ok. It's ok. I can do this if it's you. Try to stay with me. I would have liked to do this in a bed, in a five star hotel after a shower. But this is what we've got. So this is what we get." She slid her hand inside of his open zipper.

He tried to pull away from her. "Zoe…don't."

He sounded so afraid. So scared. She hurt for him, for her. She hurt for both of them that this is what it had come to. "I can help you. Let me help you. It wants sex. Let's give it sex."

"No." He shook his head, harsh, hard, "No. I won't. Something else, anything else. I won't do that to you."

"Because you don't want me?"

He met her eyes, held them. "Not like this. Not like this. Some fucking beast unable to stop it. I don't want to use you. I don't want to HURT you."

It healed something in her to hear him say it. To know he meant it. It healed something to know under the thing that rampaged through his body, he was still the man who'd rescued her. Her brother had tortured him so badly, hurt him, abused him. He'd pushed and taunted and led them both around like toys. Somewhere in this place he was still pulling their strings.

They had no control. But this…this she could control.

She knelt in front of him again and skimmed her hands over his belly and hips. His breath fell out in a shaky gasp. The surprise on his face was legion. "You have to give it something, Chris. I know it's not how we would have wanted it. But I knew, I knew there was a chance this would happen. I'm attracted to you. Very attracted to you. You know that. Are you attracted to me?"

She saw him clenching his jaw, sawing his teeth together. "Zoe…just run. You can run away. I won't follow. I'll find the damn vault. I'll fix it. Just run now. Ok? Run away."

"I told you to trust me. I meant it. I was afraid of you before because it had you. The thing had you. I've fucked men before when it had me. It was like being outside myself, like watching a demon using my body to fuck. It was horrid. This…doesn't have to be horrid. If you stay with me. If you stay…it can be ok. I wanted to touch you…so it can be ok." She skimmed her hands around and over his back now, feeling the warmth of his skin and the steel of his muscles. "But you can't keep fighting it. Let it have something and we can find the damn vault and get out of here. And then…I can touch you again, how I really want to. And you can touch me…and we won't be afraid."

She slid her hand inside the open fly of his pants again. He shuddered but let her.

She should have known he'd be the type to forego underwear. She wrapped her hand around him and lifted him free. Objectively speaking, he had a beautiful cock. It was thick and long, soft and steely, jutting from a springy nest of dark hair. He was shaking so badly now, like a man with hypothermia trying to stay warm. She cooed to him, trying to soothe him even as she slid her hand over him and started to milk him.

He was torn between shame and skin prickling need. He felt himself burn with the broken ends of both. What had become of him? What was this horror show he was stuck in? He'd nearly raped this girl and she was here now beside him playing with his body. She was something better than he could ever hope to be. She should have run screaming. He wanted to touch her, he wanted to take her. He wanted to feel the blood beneath her skin burst hot and coppery on his face. Jesus…he was so confused.

She shifted her hands and brought his bound ones down to himself. He didn't need any instruction, he took over touching himself. She slid her hands up his arms and grabbed his biceps. His eyes were closed. The shame and reluctant pleasure on his face broke her heart.

She so desperately wanted to help him. She took off her shirt and laid down on the ground in front of him. "Look at me. Chris. Look at me. Please."

He did and she ached for his confusion, his painful desire and his own loss written all over his handsome face. Zoe skimmed her hand up his thigh, rubbing him. "It's ok. Damnit. It's ok." She lifted his bound hands and guided them to touch her. Her hand replaced his, pleasing him, torturing him. He shook his head and wouldn't do more than pass the backs of his fingers, just once, just a little over her the softness of her mound.

That was it. That was all it took. He gasped, grasped her forearm. And shuddered, shivered, and spilled himself wet, hot, and sticky all over her belly. She lay perfectly still while he did. It should have been such a wonderfully sexy moment. It had been robbed by the perversions of her brother. Even this he had stolen from her.

She rolled away and used water to rinse herself. She dressed quietly while he continued to kneel there, breathing sharply. He'd zipped himself back up while she rinsed herself. She felt awkward, sad, and a little dirty. She wanted to touch him, reassure him. And it was an odd feeling since he'd all but thrown her around and tried to rape her moments before…but that hadn't been him. Not really. He was almost painfully polite and sweet and funny…she was afraid where the violence of before had failed, that this…this would break him.

"Chris?"

He rose, slowly and turned to face him. No, she took it back, not broken. He wasn't broken at all. The rage on his face was fine and trembling. "Let me say first that I'm sorry for that."

"It's ok."

He shook his head. "It isn't. Stuff like that…it should be good. It should be hot, heavy, and amazing. That…that was just…"

"….scary."

"Yeah. And twisted." Her pants were trashed, barely hanging on her hips where he'd ripped and destroyed them like some perverted pathetic thing. He was going to find Lucas and do more than take off his head. He was going to make sure this time he turned that trumped up toddler with a psychotic death wish into a puddle of piss and fear.

In the whole of his life, he had never touched a woman like that. His mother would have smacked the living shit out of him if he'd even tried. He'd been raised to respect women, to treat them as equals, as ladies, as friends. He'd-

He froze, blinked, shook his head.

"Zoe…"

She was scanning the room beyond where they stood, looking for threats. "Hmm?"

"I was born in Clear Lake, Ohio. The oldest son of Greg and Deb Redfield. I have a sister named Claire and a hand carved sloop cleverly named The Nemesis by my partner Jill Valentine. Jill and I met at the police academy where we under went training to join S.T.A.R.S. otherwise known as the special tactic and rescue squad. We were sent in to recover Bravo team when their chopper went down outside of Raccoon City. That was the fall of 1998."

She stared at him, open-mouthed. "You remember."

"I remember. Not everything. But it's coming back."

"The Glock?"

"Muscle memory mostly but it started the process. When we find Lucas, I'm going to make sure he stays dead this time."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Chris Redfield. And there's one thing you should know about me." He took her hand to guide her into step beside him, "I don't lose."

Right there, in that moment, she believed him.


	3. Holding Out for a Hero

Author's Note:

As he starts to remember, he starts to regain pieces of himself. The girl at his side acts like an anchor, holding him here and helping him heal. The evil persists, plaguing him in ways he's yet to know. What makes a hero? Let's see if he can find out.

…

III. Holding Out for a Hero

DULVEY, LOUISIANA, 2017

Who was Chris Redfield?

His mind tried desperately to find pieces to connect. He remembered some things: he was single, there was no wife waiting at home for him. He could remember where he'd grown up and the smell of his mother's perfume. He could remember more and more as the slow trek through the mines brought them closer to the vault.

What had brought him here?

That part hadn't come back yet. He couldn't remember what had brought him to Louisiana. It would come back eventually, he had no doubt. But he needed it sooner than later to get into the fucking vault that the raving lunatic was pushing them toward.

The girl behind him stumbled and cursed as she slipped on some slippery rocks.

He turned and grabbed her hand to help her maneuver.

Who was this girl?

Zoe: pretty little thing that had offered her body to him to help him fight the madness that was licking around his guts like horny tongues. He couldn't remember his damn purpose here but he'd never forget her perfect little breasts. He caught her against his chest as she stumbled again in the too big boots. His body reacted, telling him that he'd love to see those breasts again.

He set her away from him like he'd touched fire.

The thing in his body was relentless. It wanted blood and sex and surrender. It obviously didn't know who the fuck it was up against. It was barking up the wrong damn tree if it thought surrender was going to be as simple as sending mixed signals to his dick.

His dick hadn't controlled him since he'd turned fifteen and figured out the real reason he had it. Not for pissing, nope, the dick was for fucking. And the first time he'd stuck it in a girl and gotten it wet, he was pretty sure was as close as he'd come to a revelation as anything Pastor Tom had been preaching with his fire and brimstone at the local Baptist church in Clear Lake. He gave a silent thanks to Marcia Cross and her loose morals for her help in ushering him into manhood.

Since then he'd had a girlfriend or two and a lover when it suited. His job forced him to be selective of his lovers. There was no simple snatch and grab or throw down on random ladies. His last lover had been a brief and mutual three night stand with a pharmaceutical rep he'd met at a seminar for bio-organic contamination in Washington D.C. A few days of bumping uglies and they'd parted friends.

The last real girlfriend he'd had had been pre-Raccoon City. College. A lot of crying and drama followed by a bitter break up and then she'd subsequently married his college roommate.

Chris got out of being stuck with a girl who liked to yell about how he was missing his "love switch", the roommate got a wife, and the girl got a man who suited her. It was a win-win-win. The wedding had been fun and a good excuse to go back home again for a while even if he'd had to bring his sister as his date.

Zoe grabbed at his hand as we wandered too close to an exposed electrical wire. "Easy, Suga'. I can't see that ends well. You'll get the shock o' your life, if ya touch that."

He looked down at their linked hands, back at her face, and held her eyes when they shifted to him. "Yeah. The shock of my life."

The blush spread pink and pretty across her cheeks. She dropped his hand and kept moving. Honestly he didn't know why he wanted her like he did.

She wasn't his type. Not at all. His type was five ten and had breasts a man could drown in. As the pieces of himself came back, he realized he was also as good as they came about not "shitting where he ate". He didn't touch girls he worked with; end of story. Never once had he treaded over that line and risked his career, his personal morals, or the job to get his dick wet.

Technically he didn't work with Zoe so he wasn't crossing any lines, ethically speaking. But it still felt like he was. He watched her move and wondered if his attraction to her was situational, related to the parasite growing inside of him, or if this was something different then he'd ever felt before.

Maybe it was all three.

She reached a fraying rope bridge over the long, long chasm. She glanced back him, nervous. The bridge was as long as a football field looked about as solid as a fart in a whirlwind and about as steady as a promise from Umbrella.

He chuckled a little, amused. "So, there's that way…"

"You see another?"

Chris moved up beside her, glancing down into the unending darkness. He could see the hopeless of the situation. And had to find the humor in it. She was right, apparently he was never serious.

"We could jump."

"Stop it."

He glanced at her and winked. "Ok. So we cross it."

Zoe nodded, afraid. "What if it collapses?"

"You rather wait here for me to turn and come after you again?"

She met his eyes. He held her gaze. The moment drew out for longer than it should have…and then she dropped her eyes to his mouth.

He spoke before he realized he was going to, "Don't."

She dropped her gaze, blushing. "I'm s'rry. I don't know why I can't playing with the fire of it. I guess I just can't stop thinking about you."

That was a helluva thing to tell a man with an overactive horny parasite growing inside of him. Maybe not the best thing to say. Maybe. But he appreciated truth. At whatever the cost.

"Zoe…" He tried to find the right words, "The more parts of me that come back…I kinda think I'm a good guy."

She blinked at him. "You need your memories to know that? I knew that the moment we met."

Humbled, he stared at her. "Good guys don't jerk off on girls' bellies while trying not to rape them, Zoe."

Zoe grabbed his hands and squeezed them. "You've got to stop beating yourself up about that, suga'. Every minute we're here, in this, might be all we have. So, it wasn't an ideal situation, that's true. But the part that came before? The part where I put my mouth on you? That was all me. It wasn't the parasite. It wasn't anything but sheer lust because YOU helped me find the cure for ME. And I want you. Whatever comes between now and the end, if we die or live or go down fightin', Chris…I want you. It's ok if you don't feel the same as the parts of you start comin' back. I will still mean that. It doesn't make you a bad guy to want me back or even to NOT want me back. I won't break either way, I promise you."

He stared at her for a moment longer, drawn to her in ways he couldn't figure out yet. It was partly the knowledge that he had never met a woman like her before. She was a stone cold survivor. She'd lived and hid and survived for YEARS before he had come along. She flipped a switch inside of him that was attracted to strong, capable women. No wilting flower, she knew how to LIVE.

She started across the bridge while he stayed there watching her.

She was a third of the way across before he called out to her. "Slowly! Slowly! The tensile strength of the wood is compromised from the humidity in here and exposure. For god's sake, Zoe, you could step on a rotten piece and fall straight down."

She smiled at him…and winked. "I can think of worse ways to die than goin' down!"

Chris snickered. The little dirty minded temptress; he could appreciate her. He heard it start roaring when she was about half way across t the bridge.

She turned back, he turned around. It came out of the mouth of the mines where they'd just been. It roared like a lion and shook the walls. It was huge and disgusting and covered in warts and bumps. The face resembled something that was bleeding and raw, exposed muscle with bone peeking beneath, two eyes rolling and lolling in abolished sockets. It might have been human once. Of course it might never have been human at all.

It was wider and fatter than three men lying head to toe. It was cursed with arms as long as he was and curved talons on both arms that looked capable of taking off your head in a single swipe. Worms and rot had started in cavities along its body, crawling and stinking as only the beginnings of necrosis and disease can. A huge hunchback kept it low to the ground as it made another gurgling roar and came at him.

On the bridge, Zoe cried, "Mama!?"

Jesus. He usually avoided meeting a girls mother. In this case, he was going to make an exceptionally strong effort to not get up close and personal with her. He went against his own advice, he started running across the bridge. His hand came up and pointed to the other side, "Zoe! Go!"

She did. She ran like someone had lit a fire under her ass.

The thing couldn't fit on the bridge. It paced, screaming, it's hunchback trembled, burped, and the smell of rotting meat and filth was almost too much to stomach. A horrible, gooey, dripping bug erupted from its trembling hump. It buzzed loudly and echoing through the caverns; turned to give chase to the people on the bridge. It was the size of a golden retriever puppy.

"What the fuck is that?!"

"That used to be my Mama! I thought she was DEAD!"

"Obviously she didn't stay that way!"

Zoe reached the other side and he was half way there. The bug got him first. It zipped down, buzzing heinously and noisily and hungrily. He turned, swatted at it, and the stinger drove into his forearm. It felt like fire from finger tips to elbow. His free hand grabbed the fat little body and squeezed. The bug panicked, batting useless wings against his hand.

"You want to sting me, you little son of a bitch?" He jerked it out of his arm and used his free hand to rip off its rapidly thumping wings. "Let's see how if you fall as fast as you fly." He tossed it down into the abyss.

The thing on the other side of the bridge roared in rage.

Whatever was in his body turned the open hole on his arm from the stinger into a scar within moments. So the infection had its benefits. He wondered how much damage he could take before he died.

And then he remembered what Zoe had said: he needed to give the thing inside of him something to sate it. Blood, death, or sex. If he didn't give it something again soon, he would likely try to get on top of the girl he was trying to save again.

He turned back on the bridge.

"CHRIS!"

"I have to do this!"

"NO!"

"Sorry! It turns out I'm a hero after all!" He ran back across the bridge toward the thing that waited there.

It roared at him, swiping those horrid talons in raging circles around its head. Chris hit it in a football tackle at a fall run. He went right under the waving talons and took it across the middle, driving it back from the bridge.

When it screamed again he drove an uppercut right into its ugly face. The muscles, it seemed, were good for some things. Backed by whatever Lucas had given him, he was nearly unstoppable. It was easy to see what Lucas had taken his memory. A hero wasn't afraid of what was happening. And without fear, Lucas had no power here. The powerful punch made his arm go numb and he shook his hand to bring back the feeling.

He caught one swiping arm and swung himself up on the back of the monster. It tried to scream with its shattered and ruined face. There was only so much he was going to be able to do with no weapon. That was the greatest problem at the moment.

Chris drove his elbow into the hump on its back and found it squishy and giving. He drove his hand down into the opening on top and grabbed what was nesting inside. The bug came free from it when he yanked, ripping out of its hive with a burst of goo and rot.

It struggled, buzzing and jerking in his hand. He drove the stinger and the bug down into the thing beneath him. It bucked, fighting and throwing its arms around wildly but he was inside its attack zone. All the strength in the world couldn't help it be efficient at close quarters combat.

He ripped the bug free and drove it down again, and again, and the thing inside of him loved it. It bathed in the violence of it. It suckled at the teet of that endless bleeding and screaming like a perverted baby. Blood, goo, and rot exploded from the places he stabbed – bathing him in the stench and filth of it.

He slipped to the side in all the mess and one of those wildly flying talons finally got him. It slapped so hard at his side that he was knocked loose. He hit the ground and rolled, the dead bug in his hand lost somewhere in the fray. It came down atop him fast and furious. The left talon drove into his side, ripping a scream from him that was deep and pain filled. The right went for his face.

"Mama!"

It whipped its head toward the voice and the talon stopped, an inch from his face.

Zoe leaped onto its back, bashing at it furiously now with a large rock she held in her hands. The thing started wailing and bucking, trying to shake her loose. Chris grabbed the talon in his side and ripped it free in a burst of blood. He cried out with it, causing his own pain, and then turned it back on its own master.

He drove the talon into the face of the screaming thing. It was instantly silence, forced into a gurgling bubbling death rattle. It bucked, twitching, tossing and killing itself faster and faster. He and Zoe pushed, pushed, shoving it toward the edge.

It fought back, slapping at them with its good arm. It struck Zoe and tossed her ten feet away to roll on the ground. Chris didn't stop, couldn't stop, he anchored his body and gave one final shove so hard he lost his balance and fell to his back on the ground. It teetered, on the edge, waving that sharp, sharp arm.

He used both of his feet to kick it, yelling with the effort of it. The thing gave one final swipe, splitting the jeans on his left leg and slicing deep into his calf. And it fell; spraying broken rock as it did, spinning off into the darkness beneath.

Chris rolled to his feet, limping as his leg started to reknit. Zoe was very still on the ground. He grabbed her and rolled her over. She put her hands over her face and started weeping.

"You scared the shit out of me! I told you to stay there!"

She hiccupped, crying through her fingers. "I couldn't let her get you! What happened to her? My mama! What has happened to everyone I love!?"

He moved to pull her against him to hold her. She wrapped her arms around his back and wept, brokenly. A long moment passed and she pushed at him, gently.

"Not into my body anymore huh?" His voice was soft in the overwhelming silence.

"You stink."

He was silent for a moment and finally laughed, releasing her. "Fair enough." He touched her face, checking for injury. She looked bruised but alright. "Thank you. You might actually have just saved my life."

"You're welcome."

They rose and she looked at him, covered in filth and stink. He was still handsome but it definitely took away from the yummy feeling in her belly to see him that way. Maybe he should stay covered in guts and rot all the time. Then she'd be able to keep her hands off of him.

They crossed the bridge now, slowly. He noticed she was favoring her right side as they moved. At the far side, he stopped her and felt along her ribs to see if they were cracked or noticeably broken. She shook her head at him. "I don't think so. But they hurt."

"Let's finish this."

"Yes."

They started down the next shaft and there was a ladder that offered a glimpse of the next phase of what would likely try to kill them. He went down first, jumping the last few rungs to the bottom. She made it about two rungs before her sore side had her slipping.

He caught her without so much as a grunt as she tumbled down.

"Sorry."

"Why? You weigh less than a ruck sack."

"I've always been thin, ya know? But starving has a tendency to make you skeletal."

He set her on her feet. "We'll fatten you up when we get out of here."

"Like a robust woman, do ya?"

He eyed her, serious now. "I seem to like the skeletal ones these days."

She blushed, squeezing his hand. "I think we're almost there. Are you remembering anything that could help us?"

"Not yet. But hopefully it will come to me."

They moved across the cold ground, side by side. The room beyond was wide open and looming. Too wide, too open, it all but breathed "TRAP" as if it had a voice and the will to yell it. He took her arm to push her behind him.

She blinked, opened her mouth to speak, and the room started to shake, shake, shiver and tremble. Rock tumbled, clacking and smacking on the ground with reckless abandon. Someone, somewhere, had a set off a charge. His mind latched on something, shivered, and tried to form it into a thought.

"Damn Lucas!" Zoe yelled and they started running around the open room.

"Actually," Chris yelled, about the sounds of ensuing collapse, "This might have been my guys!"

"Might have!?"

"I think they had orders to blow up the mines!"

"You think!?"

"Turns out, I probably gave them the orders!"

"You're going to get us killed!"

"That is a possibility! Do you think Hallmark makes a sorry I blew you up card?"

"Always joking! You oaf!"

They reached the edge of the open room that was trying to collapse around them. She ducked under the arch way the offered a glimpse into the next area. He was close behind her. It was a set of mine carts and another track.

"Get in!" She ran to grab the brake and jerked it, releasing one of the cart with a spark and squeal of metal. Chris leapt in and grabbed her hand as she ran over, pulling her in with him. They ducked down, held on, and the cart rocketed forward, teetering on unsteady wheels as it went. Rock tumbled and fell in bursts of igneous rain.

He leaned over her, taking the brunt of the falling debris. It smacked and slapped at his body as the cart burped and bumbled out of the collapsing cave. They were jerked around a corner and the area where they'd just been standing was reduced to a crumbling pile of rubble. The track screamed as it was bisected, kicking their cart into a manic dash toward the other end.

It was the worlds worst rollercoaster ride.

The cart teetered, dipping badly to one side, Chris threw his weight to the other side to counteract it. It rushed down, down, faster and more unsteady. Zoe yelled, "Oh gawd! Look!"

The track split, shearing off one wheel of the cart they were in. The cart squealed, sparking metal like constant fireworks. It finally flipped, and flipped again, rolling them over and over like a human hamster wheel. They held on and then were dumped, rolling and scraping along the g round.

Chris came to a stop smashing into a pile of rocks. Zoe kept right on rolling and went over the edge.

"NO!"

He scrambled, bleeding, and crawled across to the drop into the darkness. She was dangling ten feet below by her fingertips. He nearly swallowed his stomach in relief.

The fear on her face was painful.

"HOLD ON!"

"I CAN'T!"

"YOU CAN!"

He glanced around, looking for something…anything, that he could use for a rope. There was a series of rocks and some pick axes. There was a table with some old miner's masks on it. There were three barrels of TNT against one wall which…was utterly useless.

He threw his hand down to her. "Can you climb!?"

"Are you KIDDING ME!?"

He wasn't. Clearly she thought he was. So that wasn't an option. He went over the edge instead.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? Playing bingo?! I'm coming to get you!"

"No! Get to the vault! It's right down that tunnel. You have to stop Lucas!"

"Save the drama for your mama, doll face! I'm not leaving you to die." He eased his way down, grappling and grabbing at jutting rock and ledges. It was frightening and awful, yes. It was terrifying and crappy. It was slow and tortuous.

She slipped, screaming, and tumbled another three feet before she could grab on to something.

Chris laughed, loudly, "You making this harder on purpose?"

"Of course! Don'tcha know suga'! I live for difficult shit! Come on now, come earn it!"

He chucked, slipping down the rocks toward her. She grappled, making a sound of desperation. "I can't do this much longer!"

"Yes you can! You need to work on your upper body strength!"

"You oaf! Not everyone is built like you are!"

"I bet you wish you were right now though!"

She slipped, her arms shaking badly, and her hands gave out. She slid, screaming, the rock wall sliced up her arms and tore up her hands as she tried, desperately to grab on again. Zoe started to understand that this was where she was going to die. This was it. She'd never had children, never watched the sunrise over Venice…she was just going to die screaming in the dark.

And he caught her hand.

She dangled, swinging back and forth, inches away from nothing.

He leveraged her up. "Grab onto my back and hold on! No matter what, you DO NOT LET GO! Do you understand?"

"YES!" She climbed up his back, drawing a grunt from his throat as she settled around him. He did stink, yes, but she loved his horrid smell like he was made from roses and gold.

He started, very slowly, climbing upward. His muscles were wonderful, bunching and shifting and coiling. She could feel them move beneath her hands, between her thighs, against her face that laid against his upper back as he moved. She was turned on while she dangled over the abyss, there was no end to how ridiculous that was.

Her hand slid over his stomach to feel his abs work as he climbed. She was a silly, frivolous girl to worry about feeling his body while he kept them alive. But she liked how it felt to touch him.

"Ok, we're almost to the top. When I say so, you climb up me and leverage yourself off my shoulders."

"Alrigh'!"

"Ok…climb!"

She used his hips to push herself up, felt him shiver under the force of her weight, his own, and the strength it took to hold them both on the face of the wall. Power..it was heady. She grabbed the edge of the ledge, and pushed off his shoulders to climb up. She turned back to help him and, amused, he let her.

He was soaked in sweat now from the exertion. He was covered in blood, gore, goop and rot. He was digusting…and so sexy it hurt her to look at him. She laughed a little.

"What?" He was breathing heavily as he rolled his shoulders.

"You're amazin'. Surely you know that."

"If you say so…and don't call me Shirley." He winked as he walked passed her, studying the tunnel they needed to exit down. He grabbed a few sticks of TNT and brought them along for good measure.

The vault waited at the end of the tunnel. It was a big metal door with a keypad on it. Nothing fancy, nothing overt, and yet it resonated around them with the significance of it. They moved up to it and Zoe took a deep breath.

"Anything?"

"Nope." He plugged a few numbers randomly into the keypad.

"Wai—"

An alarm started blaring, lights clicked on –bright and hot. And zombies emerged from an opening gate a few hundred feet away from where they stood. Tons of zombies, hordes of zombies, and all of them were hungry.

"In hindsight, I should have known better than to do that."

"You think?"

Chris looked sheepish. "Ah well. I have my moments."

"I personally think you have a death wish." Zoe turned back to the pad, "What now?"

Chris sighed a little, considering. "Well…I'm not entirely sure but I think we either get in that vault or we die fighting the horde. Which sounds likely?"

"You remember the code yet?"

"Nope."

"Probably option two than." She turned and grabbed the TNT from him. "Although I have an idea. Keep working on the pad."

She ran off toward the far side of the room and disappeared into a tiny alcove.

"….mmk. Probably coming back, right?" He watched the shuffling, shambling, moaning horde moving slowly down the incline toward him. "Yeah. She's coming back. Sure."

In all of his life, he'd never been more desperate to get a door open. He racked his nugget, trying to get it to remember. Remember please, he thought desperately, any minute now you're going to remember.

The horde was at the bottom of the incline.

"Ok…so probably not going to remember."

And where was Zoe!?

He glanced around at his surroundings. Nothing. He had nothing to fight them. He glanced down at his fists. He was already infected, right? So what did it matter? He shrugged and raced toward the horde.

He caught the first rotter and tackled it, driving it backwards into its friends like scattering bowling pins. A perfectly planted back kick sent more staggering and falling in a moaning mess. He threw a punch when one grabbed him and jerked, throwing it forward into its friends. They all, like London Bridge before them, fell down.

The first one that got close enough, he grabbed its brittle forehead and shoved it backwards. The cave wall worked just fine as a means of crushing skulls. He jerked, pushed, and pulled as they came at him. He shoved them into the wall, tripped them, and stepped on them.

Finally the sheer number of them started to overwhelm him. That was the thing about fighting, eventually you got tired. He ended up pressed against the door, waiting to be eaten.

Zoe whistled, drawing his attention.

She yelled, loudly, "HEY HEY HEY!"

He wanted to answer that with Fat Albert, but didn't think she'd find it nearly as funny as he did.

The zombies turned, shuffling and she waved a stick of dynamite around her head like a sparkler. She lit the tip of it and tossed it into the mess of them.

Chris, horrified, ducked down and crab walked through the mess of them. He moved as fast, and as desperately as he could, toward the farthest wall. Too fascinated by the sparking mess, the zombies convened around that stick.

The explosion was so loud, so massive, and so abrupt that it lifted Chris off his feet and tossed him around like a tornado. The good news was, the sheer mass of bodies between him and the dynamite had probably saved his life. He hit the wall, slid down, and rolled. When the noise and rumbled of falling rock was finally done, he realized two things:

Zoe was a madman! She could have killed them both!

Zoe was a genius! The door behind him was completely blown apart along with the rest of the zombies that rotted on the floor between them.

Aching, he limped toward the blown open door. "Clever girl."

She was already inside the vault. She grabbed at the various bottles of liquid, reading the labels. She hefted one and turned, grinning. "I got it!"

Chris watched her, amused. "Yeah you do. But I'm not taking it."

"…wait…what!?"

"I need to stop, Lucas. To do that…I have to be like Lucas."

"Don't be stupid. What's in you will kill you!"

"Maybe…ok probably. But that's ok. It is. As long as I STOP LUCAS. That's what I'm here for Zoe. That was my mission…to stop Lucas."

Zoe watched him, furious. She set the bottle down and moved to another shelf. She grabbed a syringe and went back to draw some of the vaccine into it. "Fuck Lucas. And fuck your mission."

"Excuse me?"

She turned to him, syringe in her hand. "Come here now."

"No."

"Come…here…now."

He lifted a hand and circled away from her. "Don't be dumb. Put that shit down. I can't defeat Lucas without whatever is my body. I know that. Hell, he doesn't even realize that he's given me the keys to his destruction."

"You already killed him once. You can do it again without the thing that is killing you."

Like enemies, they moved around each other. He dodged as she swung the needle at him. Chris laughed, pointing at her. "Put it away, Zoe. I mean it now!"

"That parasite will kill you. It will kill you while you beg for more. It will kill you and you will turn into Lucas and I WON'T LET THAT HAPPEN!"

Touched, he stopped circling. "Zoe…I won't let this get me. I swear."

"You can't stop it, Chris! Don't you understand? It will rip away every layer of you until you aren't you anymore. It will leave you empty. I would rather see you dead than turned into Lucas."

That…sounded vaguely like a threat.

"Put it down, Zoe. Now."

Zoe stopped, looked at him. "You still need proof? After everything, you still need proof that dead is better? Let's see your control work then."

She jerked her shirt off and tossed it aside. Naked from the waist up, she watched him. "How do you feel now, hotshot?"

"…well…a little confused honestly. Not sure where you're going with this."

"Aren't you?" She lifted a hand and rubbed at herself, playing with her breast. He wasn't sure what she was trying to do but his body did. He felt the answer to her little show in his pants in a heavy ache.

"Stop it."

"Why? Don't you like it?"

"We don't have time for this shit, Zoe. Put your shirt on!"

"Don't see the point really. You'll be dead soon. And I…well I want to know what it feels like to fuck you. I was hoping it would happen in a soft warm bed somewhere but you're dead set on dying tonight, so I better get what I can while I can. Sure you stink, I stink, we're filthy and nasty and scared. But hell…in about five seconds you won't care about any of that. You know why? The thing in your body won't LET YOU." She slid that little hand down into her pants.

She was ridiculous if she thought a little self masturbation was going to term him into a horny psycho. Who did she think he was? He'd been dealing with a hard dick since the dawn of puberty. He couldn't be swayed by a dirty girl with a dirty agenda…or perky, pretty little breasts with pink nipples. Or the sounds of her exciting herself while she—

He didn't even know he was moving. The fear ate at her throat as he did it. The eyes bled at the corners and lost their focus. She readied herself and he grabbed her shoving her back on the table over loaded with survival gear.

He pushed her down on the table and put his mouth on her, making sounds like a snarling dog with a bone. Horrified, she let him immerse himself in the taste of her body, nipping and biting and licking. She grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his head up.

"I had to show you. I'm so sorry." She stabbed him in the throat with the syringe and hit the plunger.

He gagged, gasped, and stumbled away to fall into a row of shelves. They tumbled around him spilling toilet paper and canned goods. Chris jerked, gasping, and collapsed onto all fours.

He was quiet for a long moment while his body shuddered and jerked, twitching and shivering. She slipped her shirt back on and grabbed at one of the pistols her daddy had hung on the wall. She jerked a round into the chamber and aimed the gun at him, arms shaking.

He rolled his head on his neck, hair in his eyes, and panted, watching her. Hoarsely, his voice came out, "You wouldn't even hit me if you pulled that trigger. You know that right?"

She made some sound of pain and relief and dropped the gun to the floor.

She hurried toward him and helped him up, keeping an arm around his waist. "I'm s'rry suga'. I am. But it's better this way. That thing…it would have had you in less then four hours. I couldn't risk it."

"Well unfortunately for us, I'm now as human as they come again. I don't know if I can save us without that extra oomph Zoe."

She cupped his face, studying him. "Then I will save us. You just sit there and look pretty."

He met her eyes, held them, and laughed. He laughed in the middle of really desperate, really awful, hopeless situation and felt good about it. Chris started to lean away from her.

"So, I guess we should try t—"

She grabbed his ears and kissed him. It was a good kiss. She was a sexy little thing. She blew the top of his head off and tried to kill him. He was pretty sure he was going to need a minute to gather his thoughts again and return them from his dick where they settled, aching.

And so he wanted her. Flat out. No lies. He wanted her. But it was JUST HIM. There was no horny little demon in him trying to fuck her raw.

Ok…maybe some lies. There so WAS a horny little demon in him that wanted to fuck her raw. But that demon, evil as it was, was all his. And had been hanging around since the first time she'd kissed him.

He hooked his arm around her slender waist and drug her to him. Filthy, stinky, covered in gross and grunge, they kissed each other until they were breathless. She drew back, a little dazed.

"Oh…"

Eyes closed, he made some sound, "Hmm?"

"I had wondered what it would be like to really kiss you without that evil parasite pushing you."

"And?"

"I think you can do better."

His eyes opened, sparkling. "You little brat."

"You oaf. He'vy and filled with bad jokes."

"He'vy…" His accent wasn't all that bad as he tried to poke fun at her. "I imagine I wouldn't be all that he'vy if I climbed on top of you right now."

She shivered with delight at the image of it. "No…no I don't think you'd be too he'vy at all."

Chris chuckled and kissed the tip of her nose. "Let's get the fuck out of here and find out."

Zoe thought that might be the best idea anyone, anywhere, EVER had had. They took advantage of all the survival gear her daddy had in the vault and changed clothes. Fully dressed, Zoe helped herself to one of the packs on the wall. It was stocked with water, soap, and canned goods. She added a little knife and filled the spare pockets with ammo and a flashlight with batteries. She had never felt BETTER.

They moved out of the vault, Chris carrying the pistol and spare ammo. He had her Daddy's shotgun looped over his back as they went as well. Her daddy's clothes were too tight on him but it was a kind of tight that was…awesome and made her blood warm looking at him.

They made it to the far side of the narrow ledge they were moving across and toward the escape hatch that would take them to the road above. At the top, the world rushed in around them again. The sounds of distant traffic, the rush of wind and sky. The heat of the humid summer night closed cloyingly around their faces.

It felt amazing.

They moved through the trees toward the road they could hear.

"What about Lucas?" She queried as they moved. "He's still in there."

"I'll come back for Lucas. I need to get you to safety."

He helped her over the guardrail they came across and they slid together down a shallow embankment to the road. The second he stepped on the pavement, he felt, for the first time, that they might actually get out of this alive. They needed to get to a phone and get some help.

The thought tripped against his brain and escaped. He didn't know who to call yet. But it would come back to him eventually. For now, he followed instinct, and led her north.

The came around a curve in the road and a howl split the air around them. Chris paused, listening. It was very close and very ominous. He didn't like it at all. Zoe didn't either based on her face.

She grabbed his hand and pulled him into a run.

"Come on! The hunting cabin my Daddy and Lucas went to all the time is close by. I don't know if the phone will be working but it's better than standing out here in the dark like targets. Maybe we can wait it out until morning."

They ran through the soggy bayou while the baying of hounds chased them. The sounds grew farther away and less hungry as the moved farther from the road. At the top of a sharp rise, about a mile from the road, the cabin sat waiting.

It was small—maybe eight hundred square feet but it looked untouched at first glance. Zoe ran around the back and came back a moment later with a key. She opened the door and they slipped inside, closing the door behind them.

It smelly moist and dusty in the darkness. Zoe turned a switch and a small lantern came on. The room was open and clean. It was a table, a small kitchen with a sink and refrigerator, and a cot to one side. A fireplace sat forlorn and unused against a far wall. But the best part was the shower. The shower was a curtained semi-circle with a rusty spout. It was rustic and simple…and amazing.

Zoe turned the handle and water spilled out of groaning pipes. The steam lifted, showing that the water heater was in tip top shape. She laughed a little, thrilled.

He gestured with his head. "You go first, I'll stand guard."

She didn't argue at all. She stripped off her clothes and closed the curtain, making a sound of unparalleled delight as the hot water hit her skin. Chris chuckled a little and poked a hand with soap through the curtain.

"Thank you!"

She hummed as she showered and Chris moved around the cabin making sure it was secure. The one little window over the sink was nailed shut. The room was humid, especially with the shower going, but there was a roll around air conditioner resting against the wall. He plugged it in, fiddled with it, and it kicked on – spewing stagnant but rapidly cooling air.

He put his face in front of the cool blast and sighed, happy.

The shower curtain slid open and he waited until he was certain she was out of the way and turned to take her place. A gentleman, he didn't look at her as she hurried naked to get a towel from the shelf against the wall. The hot water stole his breath with its lovers touch. It slipped wet and soapy over his body and made him sigh.

Clean, he killed the water by turning the spout, and stepped out of the curtain.

"Hey Zoe, can you get me something to cover myself?"

"Sure, suga'. How's this?"

He turned, too slow, and she leapt around him like a monkey. He didn't have much choice but to wrap his arms around her and catch her. She kissed him like she'd climb inside of him and eat him from the inside out.

His wet skin slid over her moist flesh and mated, drawing a moan from both of them. She grabbed his face and wouldn't relent. He figured, fuck it, and carried her naked to the cot against the wall. One thing she'd said rang true…they could be died any minute. Every second was possibly the last of their lives. Who cared about the rest of it?

She put her hands all over him and he forgot to do anything but want her. He came down atop her on the cot. She gasped, thrilled, and rose to kiss him again.

"Too heavy?"

"No…not he'vy enough." She wouldn't let him do anything to change his mind. There was no time for that, no time for any of it. She spread her legs for him and pushed herself onto his body. He grunted, dizzy with the sheer lust of it, and thrust into her.

They both made sounds of pleasure.

They mated rough and desperate. She wouldn't let him slow or stop or take his time. He didn't want to, couldn't. He pounded in her and she demanded more and more and more of him. He spiraled and shifted, drifted and damned them both with each thrusting kiss.

She wrapped her arms and legs around him like she'd blend their bodies into a single, searing, slapping mess of flesh and fucking. He tried to hammer her through the bed into the floor. She opened her mouth to scream and he took her cry with his mouth, absorbing it. They shuddered, gasping, and came together in a perfect storm of sucking and slapping skin.

He shuddered above her and she murmured something that sounded suspiciously French creole. He lifted up to look down into her face. She smiled, dazed, and brushed at his face. "I said you were a good lay."

He blinked, blinked again, and started laughing.

Zoe cuddled around his big body, snuggling on him. Lord he was something. He kissed her, sliding down on her sweaty and content.

"Thank god. I thought you said something romantic."

Zoe chuckled, "I don't know nothin' romantic, suga'. I only know the truth."

"Touche'." He kissed her, long and slow. She felt something swirl in her head. Ok..so many she knew a little romance after all.

"We need another shower."

Chris nodded, reflective, "We do. Together?"

Zoe met his eyes. Outside, there was something horrible trying to kill them. They were lost, afraid, abandoned and he had no memory of how to find help. They had nothing…but each other. It was a bad idea to get farther involved with him.

And she'd never wanted anything more.

"Together," She said and couldn't think of anything she'd rather do more.

.


	4. Short Change Hero

Author's Note:

Replete, replenished, aware…he awakes more himself then he's ever been. But at what price? Infection gone, girl beside him, he remains a mortal man. A hero? A hero often dies in a story where redemption is imminent. When will the hero…be able to put down the sword?

We have some lemony stuff bordering on smutty here. If you read my stuff, you know I'm big on the love making. Hehe. Thanks for reading!

…

IV. Short Change Hero

DULVEY, LOUISIANA, 2017

The dreams chased him. He was young and trapped in a dirty mansion. He was older and laughing. Who was the woman there? Dark eyes and hair. She touched his arm. His lover? That felt wrong.

He was young again and his sister was screaming at him. She slapped him. She was crying. His parents were dead. Dead. He was alone to raise her.

He was older and there was a man with glasses and blonde hair. Who? The man was his enemy. He knew that. And there was a gun in his hand. The Albert-001 they said. FINALLY. Don't you understand? You need this gun to defeat them.

Defeat whom?

A handsome face now and a flask. He grabbed the hand holding it. "Cut the shit, Leon!" He shouted and the man with the flask shook him away.

Jill Valentine. Blonde. Blue eyed. Dark haired. And a woman with her hand on his ass. She was gorgeous and evil. BAD, his mind said, and she was still out there. Jessica? Her name was Jessica.

There was a ship. Two of them. And the fight of his life. The fight of his death. He was dead. He died on the ground. No. He was alive. He woke up hooked up to machines. "Redfield?" And there was a pretty girl with short hair and freckles. Zoe? No. REBECCA. She was dying on the roof. He was there to save her.

He was trapped in an over turned car. There was fire and death around him. They were pulling him out. CAPTAIN, they were yelling, GET UP! Captain? Whose captain?

WHO WAS HE?

There were hands in the dark. They were touching him. They were on his belly. They were on his hips. There was a mouth and madness and teeth. He shifted, trying to get away from it. But it claimed him. It slid its mouth around him and feasted.

He came awake shouting.

The girl snuggled against his body murmured and soothed him. He panted, staring into the darkness. He was alert and aware. They weren't safe. They weren't. What was he doing here with her? Who WAS he!?

She shifted and her warmth distracted him. He glanced at her in the moonlight. She was so light there beside him. He looked at the difference in their skin tones. She was all soft paleness and freckles. He was nearly copper against her. Her dark hair settled against the scatter of hair on his chest. He touched one of those little breasts pressed against his side. She shifted closer, barely able to span the girth of his chest with one thin arm.

Not yours, his mind said, she's not yours. But you can SAVE her. REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE.

Her eyes opened a little and were silver in the moonlight. Beautiful, he thought, she was so beautiful. She had lashes as long as any he'd ever seen. That choppy, shaggy hair of hers was perfect for that pixie face. She whispered, "Ok, suga'?"

Chris rolled, putting her beneath him. She made a sound and opened her legs. He settled there, cupping her face to put it in the light. His thumbs stroked her chin, her cheeks. She met his look, equally.

In the quiet of the night, he asked, "Who am I?"

Zoe lifted her hands, slid them up the muscled curves his body from buttocks to shoulders. She s stroked him, feeling him, soothing him. "You're Chris Redfield."

"Who is that?"

"You. I don't know who ya were b'fore. Does it mattuh? Here, now…does it mattuh? All we have, all eve'h have, Chris, is now. That's it. That's all."

The coolness of the air conditioner kicked on, tossing his hair a little. She took his face. She traced his eyebrows, she traced his mouth. "I dunno the othe', Chris Redfield. I know this one. This one climbed down a fuckin cliff for meh. He took a bat for meh. He said he wasn't a hero. But he is. You are. And righ' now? You an me? This is all there is."

"Zoe…" He kissed her, smooth and slow. She held his eyes. He couldn't remember who he was. Not all of it. But he knew, he knew there'd never been a woman in his life that made him feel like a hero and a man in one moment. He shifted his body and slid into her. It was enough to make them both gasp with the completion of it.

He loved her, gentle and undemanding. She wrapped her legs around him and gave him each smooth inch of her. He kept her face in his hands, she kept eyes on his. It was like a sword of pleasure that thrust continuously between them, bleeding where it cut. She brought his mouth down to kiss her as she rolled with him toward the edge of everything.

They lay together, panting and complete with it. He fell asleep with his ear on her chest. She stared up into the darkness and knew…she knew…whoever he was before…she was in love with him now. How could you not be? He was the guy who went over a cliff to get you. This? This piece of him? It might be all she ever got. And it would be enough.

She held him against her and let the sleep take her down.

She woke him in the early dawn before the light had yet to really rise and settle on their sleeping little cabin of lies. She was smooth and soft and very beautiful and very young. Young, his mind said, as she rose above him and took him into her body. Young.

His mind told him she was a baby. A baby. Clearly a baby. And yet a beautiful, ethereal baby that slid atop him and stole a piece of what was trying so desperately to fill his mind with glimpses of recollection. The early morning light showed the smooth shape of her; the tiny waist, the flawless skin. No crows feet, no wrinkles, nothing but fine…porcelain…dewy skin. She made a sound, moving in a slow and torturous ride atop him. He felt the heat of her, the wet of her, the want of her and it blended and mixed and maddened him with it.

His hands curled up her back to bring her down to his mouth. It was a warm, wet, blissful kiss. It was so very needy and raw and perfect. Young, his mind cautioned, and he didn't care. He didn't care about anything but the feeling of her as they rolled and he gave her what was inside of him for her.

The day bled red across the sky as dawn broke, lighting the canvas of the turning horizon in brush strokes of pink, red, and gold. It was a tapestry of temperate beauty and perfection. A pendulum, he thought reflectively, as he held her and watched the colors bleed a new day upon them. It came back in a sweeping arc of truth and pain. A pendulum, trying to remind him that this wasn't where they stayed. It wasn't where they played. It wasn't where they were safe.

Who was Chris Redfield?

He wasn't a man who stopped to love a skinny beautiful girl in a cabin while the bad guys beat down the door to find them. So why was he here? She shifted, curling her fingers in the soft hair on his chest. She was why he was here. A survivor, a girl who'd lived in fear and starvation for years. Why? Mia Winters was the answer.

His brain said: you know the answers. You're Chris Redfield.

But WHO was Chris Redfield!?

He rose from the bed while she slept and moved into the bathroom. It was a little sink and a mirror and a toilet. He used all three and stood before the mirror. So that was his face. He stared at it, discerning each set of features in the early morning light.

Handsome? Sure. Objectively. He was a handsome guy. He touched the growth of beard on his face and knew that it was Dad's face. He looked like his Dad. His sister looked like his Mom. His sister Claire. He knew this. He knew this. But he didn't know WHO he was. He'd played football in highschool. His bestfriend was a woman named Jill Valentine. She was somewhere out there looking for him. He knew that.

But who was he? He was the boss? He was something.

He'd come to kill Lucas. He knew that. How did he know Mia Winters? Ethan? The Bakers? What was he DOING here? Killing Lucas…and what?

And was the girl in the bed part of his mission? Was he supposed to…kill her?

He didn't KNOW. He knew he was a man who ALWAYS finished the mission. But he couldn't remember any of them. He didn't know anything else but what was mostly instinct and survival. Pieces were there and coming back. But how long? Would it be before he made more mistakes?

Was it a mistake to take the girl in that bed in his arms and love her? He'd done it. It had felt good. It had felt amazing. Would it cost them both?

The face in the mirror was older. He tried to judge the age. His finger touched the slight lines at the corners of his eyes. What was his birthday? "You're forty."

He said it to his reflection. That felt right or close to it. He was at least that. Old? Older. Something. He turned and Zoe was watching him. She was just standing there.

He said, "You need to take a piss or something?"

He moved so she could take care of business. She closed the door and he heard the sink running. She came out, smiling.

"Are ya alrigh', suga'? I get the feeling somethin' is wearin' ya down here. Tell me."

He backed her against the wall. She went and her storm gray eyes were bright with excitement. He touched her, cupping one little breast. She let him and made a little sound. He touched her soft but tight belly, skimmed one thin hip. She was thin, yes, and a few good meals would put some weight back on her. But she was perfectly shaped. He spread a hand against her body and looked at the color of her. Pale, pretty, and pink in all the right places.

She wasn't his type, his mind said, and he didn't like that thought. She was his type. Completely. Because she was the strongest thing he'd ever seen.

She watched his face in the sunlight. She liked it. It was a good, strong, ungodly handsome face. She traced the sprinkle of gray at one temple. She loved that too. No boy, this was a man touching her. She didn't think she'd ever touched someone like him in her life. His body was insane. And more so? His intelligence. He was all alert eyes and thought. He was touching her and thinking about her at the same time. She'd never met a man who did both.

She grabbed his throat and drug him against her. He made a sound. She said, softly, "No more soft. Now."

"I'll hurt you."

She grabbed his body in her hand and jerked. He thrust against her fist. She put her mouth against his, whispered, "….good."

And there, she thought, was the other part of him that drew her. He was gentle, so very kind, and so very deadly. He killed her where she stood. He turned her against the wall, grabbed a handful of her hair, and didn't wait. He just thundered into her and tore a cry from her mouth. She slapped her hands against the wall and shoved back against him.

It was fast, brutal, and stole her breath. It hurt. Yes. In all the right places.

In all the right ways.

He grunted, cursed, and filled her full of him. God. She was something. Who was he? He didn't care. Right then? He was hers. That's all he knew.

She stood there for a long moment as he finished, as she finished. She rolled against the wall, shivering.

He was slipping on his pants. He moved back toward her. "Rocked your world, did I?"

And she laughed. She laughed. She slipped her arms around him. He brushed back all that wild unruly hair of hers. Zoe studied his face.

"Definitely. We need to get outta here righ'?"

"Soon. Yeah." His voice was gruff. In the light of the day, she was softly beautiful. That hollow face and pale skin, that thin torso and arms. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to KNOW her. And he was afraid of what he would find out about himself as he remembered the rest.

She kissed his mouth and he held her eyes, watching her. She was short. Barely to his shoulder. He liked it. He liked her. He said, "How old are you?"

And she laughed again, amused. She studied his face. "Does that matteh?"

That accent. He dug it. She was creole in her bones. He skimmed his hands over her naked little butt. She sighed and shivered.

"It could. You get…that I'm older right? Older than you."

"Yeh are?" She looked shocked. He snorted a little. "Chris…does it matteh? Really? Who cares? We had each other. It was amazin'. Just let it be that."

She moved to get dressed. He watched her, leaning on the wall. "Did you graduate from highschool?"

Zoe turned to look at him. He was ungodly handsome. He was in those pants, slung low on his hips and left unzipped. His torso was all muscle and strength and enough dense hair to make her mouth water. She could see the gray in the sunlight better in his hair. He was salt and pepper. He was older, yeah he was. It was sexy. And she loved it Why did it bother him so much?

She slipped on the red tank top she'd found over her little breasts. No bra. She was small enough chested bras didn't even matter for her. He watched her slip on the little panties and cargo pants they'd found in the survivalist bunker. The cargo pants were pea green and she tucked them into the heavy boots with big fat socks. Zoe caught him still looking at her and sighed, "I'm twenty. Or will be in a few weeks I think."

"…you're not even old enough to drink?"

And now she laughed. "I had a fake I.D. It did me just fine. I was never a good girl, Chris. I was a bad one. I got intuh trouble plenty. My mama and I got intuh fights constantly. I was always in and out of juvie growin' up. Lucas? He was twice as bad. My parents couldn't get him to settle down, evuh. So we just ran wild on 'em. So you're a good guy and I'm a bad girl. Does it change anythin' ta know it?"

Chris shifted a little, uncomfortable. "I think I'm twice your age. At least."

"So?"

"It should matter I think."

"Silly oaf of a man." Zoe crossed to him. She ran her nails over his stomach and made him shiver. She kissed him, slow and steady. He caught her face and drew her against him.

They separated. "Worry about things that mattuh, Chris Redfield. Not things that don't. I wouldn't give a great rat's ass if you were sixty. It wasn't your face or your body that caught me. It was you. The rest? Just packagin'."

She glanced at his body for a long time. When she lifted her eyes back to his face there was a splash of pink across her cheeks. "I like the packagin' though. So keep it that way."

She smacked his ass and turned back to find her backpack. He snorted a little and moved to get dressed. He was being a prude. Clearly.

None of that, none of this, mattered. She was right about that. It was time to get the fuck out of here, get her to safety, come back and finish that fucking lunatic.

They moved out into the warm, tepid trees. Moss and hanging branches heavy with wet growth spread around them. He could hear the cicadas and the chitter of crickets as they stood in the early morning light.

He watched the sun peak prettily out of the growing clouds. Rain, he thought, it was going to rain before the day came in too hard. There was a rumble of thunder somewhere in the distance. He waited, listening to the breeze.

And there was a growling close to him. He rolled his head. Zoe watched him, all that muscle in that tight t-shirt. She coveted him. She knew it was unwise. It was unhealthy. She couldn't keep him. He was a hero. And the hero? He never picked the girl like her. She was the bad girl, the skinny little thing that needed saving.

Chris surprised her by jacking a round into the shotgun. She watched him turn and the breeze caught his hair, ruffling it. She was mesmerized. Not a hero, he'd said, but he was. He moved like a warrior, like a man with a mission, like a fighter. It was why Lucas had taken his power. He was no Ethan Winters. Ethan had been a man in loafers looking for his wife. A fighter, god yes, who'd come out of that like a god.

But Chris Redfield was already there. He had seen it, done it, killed it and fucked it raw. He could be a hundred years old and it wouldn't change that. He wasn't a man who went down and stayed down. He rose, kicked in the door, and obliterated the thing waiting there that was trying to kill him.

Lucas had nothing to fight that. Nothing. The closer Chris came to being himself, the further Lucas' hold was stretched. She thought, for the first real time, that he would save them. She would stand with him, beside him, and they would save each other.

The dogs leapt out of the trees and barely got three steps. The first one? He blasted it off its feet in mid jump. He ducked low and the second barreled over his head. Zoe wasn't much with pistols, no. But she was just fine with hand to hand. She drove the axe she'd taken from her daddy's cabin into its heavy side as it leapt at him.

Surprised, he watched her swing that big axe with her skinny arms. It smashed, arcing blood in a thick red spurt. The dog yelped, suspended, and it was dead before it landed.

He looked at her. She held his gaze. A survivor, he remembered, she had to know how to fight to make it for three years. She was a survivor. It was another piece that drew him to her.

He studied the dogs. They were half covered in mold and fungus. Fungus, he thought, it rang in his head. Why? Was that the basis of the infection? Who was Mia Winters? And why did that name resonate as well. Zoe had mentioned Ethan. But there was no lingering knowledge with that thought. Mia though…she felt familiar to him. Why?

The first drop of rain split the angry sky. They moved through the trees together, silent. She wondered what he was thinking, what he was feeling. She knew they were both desperately listening. Outside of the haven of their night together, the cold light of the day was bringing shadows of regret.

For her? No. For him? Clearly. He was mired in it. Was he sorry that he'd touched her? It was a common reaction for men. She wasn't beautiful. She knew that. What had her mother always said? Boyish. You're so boyish, Zoe. Why can't you just wear a dress and grow your hair out? Zoe had gone the opposite of anything her mother had ever wanted. She'd kept her hair choppy and short, worn boys clothes, kept herself slim and androgynous. She did it, on one hand because it suited her frame, on the other to piss off her mama.

Look at him, her mind said, why would he pick you? He is clearly something outside of this mess. Maybe he's…married? She considered this. Was he married? Maybe he had children. I'm twice as old as you, he'd said, did that mean he had a child her age? It was interesting. It didn't change anything. But it was interesting.

They came to the road again. He studied it and considered. She followed him along it now, heading north. He was heading toward town. Dulvey proper was little more than a wide spot in the road. But it would allow him to find a phone and make some calls. It would help him reconnect with who he was.

And what would become of her?

She paused, considering. Would he turn her over to his organization? Would she be subjected to tests and experimentation? She started to slow down. Would he do that to her?

He realized she wasn't behind him and turned back. Thunder rumbled and spilled rain around them. Chris moved back toward him…and she backed away.

Surprised, he looked at her. "What? Zoe?"

"Who are you?"

The rain was steady and thick. He watched her, curious. "What?"

"Who ARE you? Who do you work for? Do you remember?"

He considered, watching her. "The BSAA, clearly. Although I don't know what that means."

"You'll call them. When we reach Dulvey. You'll call them. And they'll come for you."

"I guess. Yeah."

"I can't go with you. You have to go on without me."

Surprised, concerned, he took another step toward her. She backed off again. "Go. Please. Get them, stop Lucas. But I can't go. I can't. I know what happens when organizations take ya. They'll put me in a lab. Yuh'll let em study me. I can't. I'm sorry."

"I won't. I won't do that. Zoe!"

She was backing away. He followed her, worried now. "Zoe…stop."

"Eveline…she was what you were aftuh. EVELINE. I know that. You want Lucas to study him too. Are you SURE you're the good guy?"

"NO!" He shouted it, lifting his hands, "I don't know that! I don't know anything. I need you to stay with me. I can't protect you if you run off."

"I won't let ya put me in a lab, Chris. No. I'm sorreh. I am. But I gotta go. Ok?"

"Zoe! Lucas will get you. He will take you."

"Maybe. But I can't trust you anymore 'n him, can I? Shit. O' course not. Damnit. Chris Redfield…I won't forge' yuh. Suga', you probably the best thing eve' happened to me. Shit." Zoe turned and ran through the trees.

"Zoe!" He gave chase for what good it did him. She knew this bayou like the back of her hand. She ran and was gone, a little red blur. He fought the pouring rain, shouting her name.

Zoe ran, trying not to cry. She couldn't let them take her away. Damnit, why hadn't she thought about that before? Of course he could be the thing that ended her too. He was good. She felt that in her bones. He was so good. But his organization? Maybe they were the ones that Daddy had been so sure was watching them for so long. The chopper he'd come on…that symbol…what was it?

She ran through the trees, listening to him shout her name. He shouted, shouted, and finally she couldn't hear him anymore. She made a little sound of a sob in her throat. He would stop Lucas, she believed that. But at what cost? It couldn't be her. She couldn't let that happen.

Zoe ran toward the far side of the bayou, hurrying toward Renard Parish. It was a long haul. It would take her two days on foot. But she'd done worse. She ran through the rain and wasn't looking. She was thinking of Chris Redfield. She was picturing his mouth. His hands. She was remembering the feel of him atop her. He'vy. No. Just right.

She should have been looking.

She'd have seen the shovel before it smashed her clean in the face.

….

He reached Dulvey in less than two hours of walking. He was quick, efficient, and determined. He stepped into the tiny local diner and out of the rain.

Chris gestured to the waitress. He name tag said: Bea. She was young with bleach blonde hair and dark roots. She smiled at him. "Hiya suga'. What can I do ya fo'?

"I need to use your phone. Can I?"

"Course hunneh. Gimme a minute." She turned to the cook and he brought her a cellphone. She offered it to Chris with a smile. "There ya go, take yuh time."

Chris stared at it, wracking his brains. He dialed the only number that kept flashing in his brain. It was answered on the first ring.

"Claire? Listen to me, very carefully. I don't have much time to tell you what's happening."

….

Zoe awoke slowly. She was throbbing. She could feel blood on her face. She figured her nose may be broken. She wiggled her face and it was simply sore all over.

She wasn't tied down. Not even a little bit. She was sitting in a chair in a room with a dead body.

That was it. The dead body was propped up against the table across from her. It's face was a massive grimace of death with no eyes. It had a sign on its chest that said: Survive?

She blinked. And then, of course, she heard the voice. "Heya sis! Where ya BEEN?! You being fucking the hero! You WHORE. All those years waving your ass in my face yelling about what a pervert I am…IT WAS YOU! You dirty little tramp. There's only one way this can go, of course! It's tiiiiime to plllllayyy a GAME!"

Zoe shifted in her seat. She looked around. Empty room, dead body and a door. She looked around. The place felt familiar. She figured it was one of Lucas' horrible playgrounds. Where? And how far from town? Had Chris made it?

He answered that question, "He's dead. You know that right? I killed him. I HAD TO! He CUT OFF MY FUCKIN HEAD!"

"…what?"

"I gave him the same game. He lost. You gonna win? Who do you think that body is!?"

She glanced at it. It was a big man, yes, that much was obvious. She looked at the hand. She rolled it over. And there was no tattoo.

She said, "Liar. You liar!"

"Ok FINE! That's not him. But he's still DEAD. I stomped his hero ass into the FUCKIN DIRT."

"You can't fight anyone, ya peeschwank. Come on down and do it. Stop playin' games!"

The laughter was heavy and insane. It was high pitched and awful. Lucas hit a switch and the lights went out. She was immersed in darkness. "Find your way out, sis. SURPRISE ME. Think you can!?"

The door opened and in came one of the disgusting mutants that Eveline had been shedding all over that house. The mold remained. Did it mean Eveline remained? Even though Ethan had destroyed her. Was she still there? God. Or had she shed so much onto Lucas that he could produce them now?

Was that even possible?

She wasn't a scientist. On her best day she wasn't even close. She was just a girl, in love with a guy who was dead or lost or coming back to kill her, and she was screwed.

She rose, watching the thing lurch toward her. She waited, eyeing it. It crept, wobbling toward her. It was black and rot and smelled like wet and damp and swamp. It slapped out at her and she rolled away, leading it away from the door. It got too close, too fucking close, and she shoved the dead body in the chair at it. It hit, a loud thunking chunk of a sound, and she ran for the door.

The frame shattered in a burst of wood behind her as she ran and it chased her, letting loose that horrible indefinable noise that sounded like wailing or screaming or crackling leaves. She ran through the pitch black. But Lucas had over played his hand here. She'd been LIVING in the dark for so long she was more comfortable there than in the light. A hundred times more comfortable.

Zoe ducked left, rolling into an open doorway. She grabbed the door and eased it shut. Her eyes scanned the darkness and found the window. She moved toward it and glanced out. It was dark and scary and there was nothing out the window. He'd black it out, clearly.

She ripped off her shirt, wrapped it around her fist, braced her feet like she was Chris Redfield and punched the window. It hurt but it worked. The window burst in a shatter of glass. She cleared it and looked out. It was a far fall. Two stories at least. She shouldn't jump.

The door burst open and the thing came through.

It didn't matter now.

She jumped out.

She tried to tuck and roll but she wasn't. She wasn't Chris. She just fell, heard her leg make a bad sound, and she went down onto her face. The leg was instant pain. It made her shout but she was out of the building. She limped, hurrying as best as she could. The leg was already wounded from being tossed out of the ship. She was nearly lame on one side now.

The night closed around her. She limped, trying to get her bearings. Where was she? She could smell fire. It acrid and close. She turned, eyeing the trees and the horizon.

"Zoeeeee!?"

No.

She kept limping. She could hear Lucas coming for her. Where could she run? Where could she hide?

"Did you CURE yourself? Did you? You GOT RID OF THE GIFT!? You little TWAT!"

And he was there, popping out of the trees. "BOOOO!" He laughed, maniacally. He backhanded her and she was flung against the floor of the swamp. The muck and mud slid between her fingers. She rolled away, limping to her feet.

The rain pounded around them. She turned, facing him in the boiling heat, in the rolling thunder and the flash and crash of lightning. "Why? She's DEAD. Lucas, Eveline is dead! Why keep fightin' f'r her!? She was nuthin to us!"

"She was more my sister than you ever were!" He pointed at her as he circled her. She panted, trying to find some way to survive this. How did she survive it? She'd be alive in a test tank now, probably, if she'd gone with Chris. Or was he dead? Was he gone?

"She played with me! She played the games. She LOVED them. She was so good at them! And she gave me so many toys! Remember? I would just bring them back to the ranch and play and play. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….some fuckin idiot said that right? Some fuckin guy. But Eveline? She was it. She was the tits. She was amazing! You GOT HER KILLED!"

"She was EVIL!" Thunder rumbled, loud and close, "Lucas! She was evil! Yuh know that! She did nuthin but turn us all intuh monsters! We can be free now!"

"The gift never made me feel like you, Zoe. Dontcha get it!? I LOVE IT. And you and the fuckin big fat hero of yours? You took away Ethan. And he gave that FUCKIN gun to him to kill her! It nearly killed me. But guess what?! You and the hero? You gave me what I needed in that bunker of Daddy's. I had all the things down in that bunker I needed. I can't bring her back. But I can get revenge for her! Starting with YOU!"

He swung the pickaxe in his hands at her. It missed her head by an inch as she ducked. She scrambled away.

"Daddy was a smart man, Zoe. He put all the good shit down there. And Eveline she put THIS down there." He pulled up the syringe in his hand. "This is the last of her. This is it. They want it!"

"Who?"

"The people I work for. They want it. They've been payin me to watch her. They've been payin me and allowing me to avoid her control. But now? She's dead. She's gone. But they NEED THIS to bring her back. I'm not a fuckin scientist. I don't know what they'll do with it. Probably use it on another version of her. She wasn't born ya know? I think she was created in a lab. Do I look like Dr. Fucking Who? I don't know how. Don't matter. I need you and your fuckin hero gone so I can go find them, give them this, and get the fuck out of here."

He swung the pickaxe again, tucking the syringe into his back pocket. She limped away and he grabbed her hair. He yanked her along the ground now, dragging her. She kicked, shouting.

"They wanted me to keep you alive if you were still infected by Eveline. But you let that stupid fat hero FIX you! You twat! Now I gotta kill ya."

He threw her and she skidded and slid along the muddy ground. The dogs were there now, surrounded her, they came out of the trees and paced, eyeing her and growling. Lucas watched, shaking his head. "Why? We could have been IMMORTAL!"

"Life is for the livin', Lucas. You gave yours away to serve her. That was never mah way. Ya know that."

"No matter. It ends here for you. I LOVED you Zoe! Why you so fuckin dumb?!"

"Must be, bein related ta you, Lucas. 'pparently, it's genetic."

"I gotta go. They're waitin for me. You fuckin bitch. I hope it hurts." The lightning shot and sizzled, close enough to strike and set something on fire in the distance. She watched it burn even in the pouring rain. Lucas? He was gone. Somewhere toward the salt mines she figured. She knew he was based there. Had Chris destroyed them? Doubtful. Bombed, oh yeah, but destroyed? They wanted whatever Lucas had in there, she knew it. And the company Lucas kept shouting about? What were they? WHO were they?

The ten dogs were pacing her, growling. They were rotted or rotting or dying or dead. Who knew? They were covered in fungus and growing. Their naked gums and teeth were black with it. The black sky was pounding the earth with boiling rain. It was so hot it stung where it struck. Like sharp and painful needles, it slapped and stabbed at the skin of your body as it fell.

Zoe didn't even get to her feet. She couldn't. Her leg was blown. She thought it was broken maybe. It was either broken or done. Either way? She couldn't run anymore.

She eyed the closest dog. It growled, flashing maniacal eyes at her. It reminded her of Daddy when he'd first gone over into Eveline's command. She whispered, "Daddy, I'm comin'. I'm comin'."

And the rotting dog leapt, snarling, for her throat.


	5. V: A World Wihout Heroes

Author's Note:

The panic sets in. The girl has fled. The hero begins to remember. Alone, afraid, he tries to piece together the parts of the man he once was. The showdown awaits. How can a hero rise to rid the world of something that cannot die?

And can the hero save the day and still get the girl?

This isn't a popular ship. But it's a good one. This little fic stands as good fun. And probably? Maybe some of my best writing in the earlier parts. I'm a big supporter of unpopular ships it seems.

Long live Bakerfield. Ha. Thank you for all my readers (all ten of you?) Haha.

…

V. A World Without Heroes

DULVEY, LOUISIANA, 2017

Zoe threw her hands up to cover her face. She waited. She felt the teeth sink into her arm and hit the bone. And she screamed. She screamed while it savaged at her arm in its ruined jaws.

She put her good foot into its belly, she humped her hips, and she shoved it up in the air. It wouldn't matter. It wouldn't dislodge the teeth in her arm. But apparently the dog wanted to let go of her and howl.

Zoe reared back and punched it in that howling face.

It was pretty fucking brave.

The dog leaped for her throat again and she punched it in the snout. Boom. A good hit. It rang down her arm. That ruined face yelped and it leaped back. Another one took up the charge and dove off the rocks above her in a flying arch.

Zoe grabbed a tree branch from the ground and hefted it like a sword from her broken place on the ground.

She felt the thunder and lightning burst around her. She could barely see in the brewing storm. It felt like a hurricane. It was bad. The storm that had brought Eveline had been bad. This was worse. It sounded like the wrath of gods as it pummeled the world with massive fists of fury.

She smelled the stink of rotting death. She swung the tree branch. It was a handful of moments. It was a lifetime.

It connected and knocked the leaping dog away in a snarling, yelping roll of rotted flesh.

Two more raced toward her and she tried to roll. She tried to crawl. She put her back against the rocks behind her and braced herself. They paced, paced, and one took a diving leap at her. She swung the tree branch and knocked it away. The second was right behind it. It was going to get her. There was no stopping it now. She couldn't redirect her weakening, bleeding arms fast enough to stop it.

She smelled its oily, stinking, bloody coppery breath as it snapped an inch from her face.

Thunder boomed. It boomed so loud it sounded like…

….gunfire.

But it was gunfire.

It was.

The dog was blasted out of the air by the rapid sound of gunfire. The gore of its death rained down upon her in a steaming wash. The world lit with lightning and the flashing muzzles of guns. She was surrounded by hellfire now. And people. People in combat gear came out of the trees around her. It was masks and gear and guns. It was flashes of lightning illuminating the fight before her.

They blasted dogs and blew apart rotting hides without any hesitation. Their helmets rejected the pouring rain that poured with a vengeance around them. They wore gear laden with weapons, with grenades, with destruction. This is what Lucas had been running from. He'd known they were coming.

He'd known they'd destroy him.

It was why he'd taken Chris Redfield. Because he was clearly with these people. They had little symbols on their uniforms. She couldn't read it in the darkness, in the flashing world that popped and roared with noise and thunder. One of them knelt in front of her. And that big gun was pointed in her face.

Zoe lifted her shaking hands in front of her face. She whispered, "Please don't."

And they pulled off the helmet. She looked into his face from less than a foot away.

She said, "You found me."

And Chris Redfield answered, "I found you."

"Are you a bad guy?"

The lightning crackled. The thunder rolled. And he said, "I don't know."

His face in the rolling storm was so handsome. He was so terribly handsome. His face was so terribly cold. Where was the man who'd loved her in the middle of the night? And who was this stranger covered in gear and holding a gun on her?

Was he there to save her? Or kill her?

Was there nowhere left in the world for her to be safe?

The pain in her body won the body. She collapsed into the mud while the roaring rain washed her blood away beneath her.

He shifted; he picked her up easily in his arms. Inside of his helmet, the voices came, "Redfield—is she alive?"

Chris answered, "She's alive."

"Get her to the evac point. We'll handle things here. Does she know where the subject went?"

"Without question. Two by two and cover the ground here. Find, neutralize, and collect samples on anything you can. The perimeter is heavy with hostiles. No one goes out alone."

"Roger."

Chris moved through the pouring rain toward the van they'd come in. He opened the sliding door and leaped inside holding her. When the door was closed behind him, he laid her gingerly on the medical table inside. The panic in him was painful.

This was why he didn't shit where he ate. This was why he didn't step outside the line. Are you a bad guy? She'd asked. And the answer wasn't quite that simple.

He wasn't. He remembered. He remembered everything. He wasn't a bad guy. And he WAS a bad guy. He'd been a good guy for a long time. He was still a good guy. But he was also a bad guy when it suited him.

He'd played to the dark side so many times in the past to save the day. He'd treaded the line between good and evil too often to offer himself up as a hero. He was no hero. He was just a man trying to do the right thing. He was just a man who'd sold pieces of his soul for the greater good.

Are you a bad guy?

His memory hadn't given him the answer to that question.

Just more questions without answers.

He freed her from her clothes easily enough. And his medic pulled off her helmet and came from the front of the van.

She eyed Zoe while she worked on her. In one hand, they were similar. Both were small of build and thin with shaggy short hair. Both were pretty and delicate like birds. One was ageless, looking the same as she had in Raccoon City so many years before even as she claimed up the far side of thirty and raced for the end of it. The other was young. So young. Barely out of her teens. A baby.

He was old enough to be her father.

Rebecca Chambers met his eyes over the table as she checked her out. She was treating the bleeding with hemostat and wrapping the nasty bite on her arm. She said, "The leg is badly dislocated. Her arm? It's pretty badly savaged. I gave her a T-Virus vaccine booster just in case. You say she was infected by the virus we're chasing here?"

"Yes. We inoculated her not long ago."

Rebecca nodded and readied a needle with a sedative, just in case Zoe came out while she was setting the leg. "Is she trustworthy? Or do I need to restrain her?"

"She saved my fucking life, Rebecca. She's not a bad guy."

Interested by his reaction, and more emotion then she'd seen from him in years, Rebecca considered the situation. "I didn't mean to imply that she was, Chris. I was only asking if she'd run when she wakes up."

Chris shook his head. "She won't run again. She's got nowhere to go."

"Alright. Do you need me to wake her to interrogate her?"

Chris met her eyes. "I need to find the brother. He's got the answers we need."

"I understand that. I can rouse her. The sedative will make her drowsy but she should be able to communicate." Rebecca set her leg and Zoe didn't even move. That's how bad she was. She was so hurt. She was so strong and small and hurt.

She'd run from him in the woods. And it had nearly gotten her killed.

Jesus.

"Do you want to tell me why she ran from you in the woods?"

Chris met Rebecca's patient gaze. He held it for a long moment. They'd never been close. They'd always worked well together but they'd never been friends. Not really. He got the feeling she wasn't prying.

"She didn't know if I could be trusted."

"Could you?"

"I didn't know if I could be trusted then either. I didn't know who I was."

"I see." Rebecca nodded and cracked smelling salts under Zoe's nose. She shifted, gasping. But the sedative Rebecca had given her kept her calm.

Rebecca moved away to ready more bandages for the cuts all over her face and hands. What had happened to her out there? Lucas had clearly tried to kill her in cold blood. The fucking bastard.

Chris was going to enjoy killing him again…and again. And again. Maybe he'd kill him a little and then kill him a lot for the trouble of it. Maybe he'd kill him and keep on killing him until there was nothing left but smoke, stink, and blood.

Zoe made some sound of pain. He shifted closer to her. Her eyes rolled, caught the dim light on his face and held there. "Yeh came back."

He could feel Rebecca Chambers watching them. He shouldn't touch her. He wasn't that guy. Amongst his organization. Amongst the elite force that had joined forces with the newly altruistic Blue Umbrella, he was untouchable. He was unshakeable. He was unflappable. He didn't touch little skinny urchin girls in the bayou after he found them dying in the rain.

Her hand lifted and curled around the big, heavy, armor plated vest he wore. And he made some sound and leaned down. His big arms, heavily trapped in the protective suit her wore, curled around her skinny form.

Rebecca froze, wide eyed, watching him.

He pulled the thin little thing up into his arms and she wrapped as much as him as she could get into her. Chris Redfield was hugging the bleeding, filthy, frightening little formerly infected girl he'd found in the bayou like she was…what? Like she was his.

Against her neck, he whispered, "I told you not to run."

"….ah know."

"What did you think would happen, Zoe? That you'd just get away and never look back?"

She was so quiet. So very quiet. He leaned back enough to see her face. The strongest little thing he'd ever seen, she was looking at him in a way that stole his breath. "Ah don't know how tuh do anythin' but look back suga'. That's all ah got."

Rebecca was stuck there, staring at them like Chris Redfield had sprouted a second head. Maybe she was seeing him in a way she never had before. Or maybe? She was seeing the guy beneath the fight for the first time in her entire life.

"Zoe.." He cupped her face and stroked his thumb over one of those deep bruises beneath her eyes. It was such a gentle move. Rebecca could do nothing but blink. "They tortured you, scared you, chased you and tried to steal your humanity. What's worth looking back for?"

Zoe laughed a little and winced from the pain it caused her. And his face…his face held all the righteous anger on her behalf she'd ever seen. So she gave him the truth, the only truth she had. I don't have any romance in me, she'd said once. But she did. For him. "You. You're worth lookin' back for, Chris Redfield."

Humbled, he held her face. "I am Chris Redfield. Finally. And I don't know if I'm still that guy you met in that chair."

"Really? Then why are yuh here with me now? Why didn't you just run toward mah peeschwank brutha and not look back? I'm bettin' the Chris Redfield you're tryin to be? I'm bettin he's not the real one at all. I'm bettin…you were the real one with me all along."

God damn.

That was what it had always been with her. She saw into his fucking soul. She'd looked passed the bruises and the blood and the fear and seen him. She didn't care about the muscles and the scars and the memory...she cared about the guy who climbed down the side of a cliff to rescue her. She cared about the guy who'd tried to spare her from the shame of what Lucas had forced on them, time and again. That guy? That was Chris Redfield.

And that guy was worth looking back for.

"Zoe…Zoe…" He laughed and put his face in her neck. She curled around him, making a sound that might have been a giggle.

If he'd slapped her in the face or farted on her or threw her out the window, Rebecca wouldn't have been more surprised. She just stood there, blinking and shocked. The door of the van opened and another member of the team was leaping in.

"Redfield, we've got confirmation of ho—"

That was another frozen moment.

Nadia glanced over at Rebecca. They held gazes. They both blinked. And finally, Nadia let out a loud laugh. "You FAKER!"

Chris let go of Zoe enough to ease her back against his arm. "What?"

"You FAKER, Redfield. We've worked together how long now? And never ONCE did you EVER show interest in girls. We had a running bet you were gay."

Amused, Chris tucked a shaggy piece of hair behind Zoe's ear as Rebecca finally moved over to finish patching her up. "Not gay. Not that it matters. But nothing wrong with towing the line either, Nadia."

"Agreed. Definitely." Nadia studied the girl on the table, smirking, "He as good as he looks?"

And now Zoe laughed a little, "Bettuh, I think."

"Figures." Nadia met his gaze again. "We located the entrance to the mines, Red. Preliminary inspection tells us we got the western side with the explosives earlier but the eastern quadrant is intact."

"Alright," Chris shifted from Zoe, "Is Lucas there?"

"…yes."

"Stay here with Rebecca while I finish this."

Zoe grabbed his arm. "Wait. Yeh should know, he is workin' with someone. He didn't say who. But it was prettuh clear that they want anythin' to do with Eveline. And yeh know what he's like, Chris. You need to be so careful. Yeh can't know what's down there."

Chris nodded and picked up his helmet.

Nadia slipped hers back on and leaped out into the rain. Rebecca said, "I'll take care of her."

"I know you will. Just in case? I'm leaving Rico and Slider behind to cover you."

Rebecca smirked. "Protecting me…or her?"

"Both of you." Chris looked at her sitting there. He hesitated to go and, in all his life, he'd never hesitated to do the job. Ever.

Zoe said, quietly, "Go save the day, yeh big hero."

And now he smirked, "…brat."

She watched the door slide closed behind him.

Rebecca held her gaze. Zoe didn't flinch or look away. Finally, Rebecca spoke, softly, "How do you think this ends, Zoe?"

Zoe didn't even bother to pull punches, "If yeh are worried that I'll cry intuh mah pillow because ah can't have the hero? Yeh don't know meh v'ry well. So ah'll f'give you. Ah know he's not for me. Ah know ah can't keep him. Ah've known it all along. The hero doesn't choose a girl like me."

Rebecca nodded, quietly, "Do you want to know about him?"

"…e'vrythin. Ah want to know it all."

"I figured you might say that."

…..

He was more prepared for the claustrophobia this time as he stepped into the mouth of the mine. He was more mentally stable. He was himself and he knew, why, he hated mines. He'd nearly died in one – twice. He'd been trapped in a collapsed mine for three days surrounded by BOWS and the darkness. He knew why he was afraid of them.

It didn't stop the little seed of panic that played in his guts when he stepped inside and slid on his helmet. The voice that greeted him was always a joy.

"Redfield, come back to me."

Laughing, Chris answered, "Jill Valentine. They've got you playing HQ tonight? Whatcha wearin?"

The soft voice of his oldest friend echoed in his helmet. Chris readied his weapon, listening to her as he moved through the semi-darkness. "Seems that way. I'm the Watson to your Sherlock tonight, you old pervert."

Chuckling, Chris answered, "What's the agenda here?"

"The mines are the last known location of our three missing agents. Three of our best. The fight was pretty bad out there. We got them and lost them the second they cleared the mine. No vitals, nothing. MIA."

"Got it. Do we know what's in here?"

"The schematics we have on it mark it as an old salt mine. But it was used as laboratory, no question. The testing there was massive in size based on early reads before we lost contact with the other team."

Chris turned a corner in the darkness and found himself surrounded by over turned machinery and a console that was littered with strange buttons. That wasn't the truly odd part. He'd been coming up on weird shit his whole. The odd part? Was the ENORMOUS metal circle that compromised one wall of the cave.

"….what the hell is that!?"

In his helmet, Jill said, "Shield machine. But the mine has been abandoned for some time. Chances are whatever they were testing down there, needed to have its signals jammed for protection. I'm guessing? This Eveline we keep hearing about could be blocked from mind control by that damn thing."

"Fuck. What's down here?"

"That's the million dollar question, big guy. Scared?"

"You kidding? I'm about to shit myself."

And Jill laughed into his ears again.

Chris heard a noise to his left. He turned, a little too slow, and one of the large steel doors to his left was rolling upward a squeal of metal on hinges. He raised his weapon and waited, waited, but he couldn't really be prepared for what came out of the opening.

It was impossibly fat, impossibly broad, impossibly ugly and frightening. It was oozing black and gunk and funk. It smelled like mold and old sweat and vomit. His helmet sensors, equipped with Genesis technology 3.0, also told him it was a mutated, amplified fungus. The horror of it was mitigated by the fact that it lumbered and ran floppily toward him in an almost comic way.

He didn't even wait. He drilled it with the assault rifle in a hail of gunfire. But the bad news about opening fire in the mine was the echo. It was so loud it hurt the ears. And it alerted the rest of the bad guys.

They came out of the walls now, they emerged from the floor. Nadia and Rice, his two man back up team, were firing into the mass amount of bodies emerging. He saw now what had happened to the rest of his team. Talons and claws and knife like arms emerged from ropey, stinky, muscled bodies of bleeding red and black. The fungus gave them the ability to mutate, amplify, and reknit in the moldy mines. It was a perfect place for their breeding ground.

Within moments, they were surrounded by twenty of them. When they blew one away, another formed from the mold beneath them, absorbed their dead comrade, and became bigger and stronger. Chris said, loudly, "ABORT. Abort and get to safety. Jill, send in back up. Now."

"Roger. Enroute."

Twenty became thirty. They were rapidly losing to the sheer scope and number of the enemy. They ducked, they rolled, they ran and moved. But these weren't zombies. They were faster, smarter, clearly controlled by one conscious mind. They moved in tandem, in teams, in groups of five or more.

Rice was the first to fall to them. One impaled him, effortlessly, into his stomach and it burst free in a gush of blood and screaming. His blood bathed Nadia and Chris like a baptism. Nadia cried out in horror as it didn't just stop. It split him in half. It ripped him clean in half as it jerked that razored arm up his gut and through his chest. The talon burst out his shoulder and left his head dangling off his ruined, gushing, pumping chest like a mangled doll.

It threw him into wall and splattered him like nothing there. The crunch and crack of shattered bone and gear was horrifying. Chris ducked low, avoided losing his head, and scrambled toward the shield machine. He scooped the key on the ground and shoved it into the machine. A jerk of it sent some kind of power pulsing through the console.

He couldn't read any of the damn symbols but he started to smack buttons anyway. The first one looked like a man on fire. So, he tried that.

The console hummed happily with power now.

The second button looked like a lightning bolt. He slapped it and slapped the button that appeared to be a sword and shield. And his time was up. Because the next nasty monster drove one of those claws toward him.

Chris ducked, felt the air shift, and felt his sleeve split open. It sliced clean into the muscle of his arm. Nadia screamed and she was impaled through the chest and shoulder by one of the things. She was dangling and screaming, kicking and firing. For all the good it would do them.

They were dead. They were dead here.

The fattest, nastiest monster of the bunch barfed on him. It landed on his chest and started to sizzle. Chris jerked, jerked, and yanked off his armor plating. He dumped it to the ground and watched it melt. He lifted his gun and blasted that shrieking, leaking, bleeding face.

And the shield machine started working.

It sent out sparks. It hummed so loud it sounded like buzzing bees. The fat nasty monster picked him up by his helmet and he felt the strain on his neck. He was going to die by his neck snapping under his own weight. The pain was incredible. Nadia was screaming in his headset. Jill was shouting that backup was coming.

And the shield started working.

It pulsed.

And the fat nasty monster exploded in a burst of goop and rot. Chris felt to his knees and was showered in it. Nadia hit her back on the floor and was bathed in it. They both sat there while the floor became saturated with liquid fungus.

In his headset, Jill was shouting, "Chris?! Chris!? Come back!"

His voice, hoarse and frightened, said, "I'm here. I'm alive. Nadia is alive. We lost Rice. The shield machine works, Jill. It was clearly here to keep the fungus in check and to help control the BOWS. Where's that back up?"

"It don't matter," Said that awful, awful, familiar voice so close to him. Too close, "You fuckin HERO! Why won't you JUST DIE!?"

And the shovel smashed against his face.

Chris went onto his back; gone.

….

In the van, Zoe was getting to her feet. Rebecca hurried from the back side.

"Hey! Hey hey, sit back down."

"Somethin's wrong. It's wrong. He ain't back yet. It's been too long. I'm goin tuh find 'em."

"You can't help him. You'll just make it worse."

Zoe shook off her hand, she opened the door to the rain and leaped out into the mud. The other two standing guard tried to stop her too. Ignoring them, she shouted into the torrential downpour, "I'm goin' intuh that cave! Now! Yeh can either help or stay the fuck off meh! But something is wrong. It's wrong. And I'm not standin here waitin for Lucas to come out of that damn cave with his head. SO MOVE!"

Rebecca instructed, quietly, "Have they radioed in at all?"

Rico shifted in the mud. "They did. It's…bad. It's bad. They've lost all contact. And we're standing down until backup arrives."

Zoe shook her head. She put her hands out. "Give me a gun. Now. Hurry. He's dead if we don't get in there. Don't yeh get it?! Lucas won't just kill him. He'll torture him for the fun of it. Give me a fuckin' gun and let me help him."

Rebecca tried reason, one more time, "The orders were to stand down, Zoe. It won't help. It might make things worse."

"Can't get much worse then dead, Rebecca. Give me a gun. For the record? I don't work for yeh. I don't work for him either. But I owe him mah fuckin life. Help me save his. Please."

Rebecca gestured with her head and Rico offered his assault rifle, butt first. Rebecca disappeared back into the van and came back with some gear. "Don't be stupid. Put this shit on. You don't know what's down there from contaminants to hostiles. Don't become someone else we have to save."

Zoe took the gear and started putting it on. It weighed a ton and the helmet was like operating inside of a scuba suit but she felt safer somehow in it. She hefted the big gun and Rebecca's voice filled her ears from inside the helmet.

"I'll guide you to his last known location. You have no training Zoe, none. This is fucking stupid."

"Maybeh. But I can't do no less for him then he'da done for meh. I love him. It's all I got."

"I hear that. I see it. You're fucking dumber than hell, but I respect you. Bring him back and prove to the world that small and skinny don't mean weak."

Amused, Zoe moved toward the mines. "That's a rogeh."

And Rebecca laughed as the small girl ducked into the mouth of the cave and got ready to save the hero.

…..

He awoke on his back – staring up at the ceiling. His face was throbbing. It was aching. His whole side hurt like someone had kicked the shit out of him…which they probably had knowing that little douchebag's penchant for beating up the unconscious.

And then?

The voice around him in the dark. "CHRIS! You FUCKER! Why won't you die!? You're a bigger pain the ass then my dear departed sister. You keep chasing me around and I'm gonna enjoy watching you die screaming like a bitch."

Chris laughed a little, shifting to find himself bound. Naturally. He was bound to something behind him. He rolled his neck and tried to see in the dark.

He could almost make out another person. He jiggled his arms to see if he could rouse them. And he answered, "Lucas…you dirty little bastard. You're playing to The Connections. But I get the feeling you're a real turd. You double crossing your own benefactor?"

"None of your business HERO! You mind your own and stay outta mine! I'm gonna give them you and make that deal WORK. What do you care anyway? You workin with the ENEMY. How's that taste, you righteous dickweed?! You sold your SOUL."

Chris felt the other person stirring in the dark. "Umbrella was reformed as a PGM. It's trying to atone for the wrongs of the former company. I believe in second chances. That's what most people get. You though? Yours are all up. Why don't you stop playing games like a sniveling little pussy and come on down here to face me like a man?"

Lucas heehawed maniacally into the darkness. "You kiddin? I seem that goddamn dumb to you?! I ain't comin anywhere close to those gorilla fists of yours! You seen yourself? Like a hairy mountain with an ugly fuckin head. But you know what? I'm gonna give you half a shot in hell of getting out of there alive. How's that? You know I can't resist a GAME! You wanna play?"

Chris shifted his arms again against the person attached to him in the dark. They moaned pitifully. He laughed, derisively, "Why not? Show me whatcha got, you mother fucker. I'm gonna bury you."

"We'll see you HERO. We'll see. For now?"

The lights snapped on so bright it was blinding. Chris closed his eyes against the assault of it. Behind him, the person moaned in pain again. He rolled his neck and Nadia was bound to him. They weren't just cuffed. They were linked together with something that was flashing red at them.

It was duct tape and blinking light.

His heart started to hammer in his chest. "You son of a bitch…" A hiss of horror.

"Oh yeah. OH YEAH. You get one chance here, HERO. You or her? You disconnect that device? BOOM. You both die. You wait too long? BOOM. You both die. Orrrrr…." A giggle. And a moment of realizing he was back in that chair and waiting to be shocked to death by a psycho. Jesus. Chris felt the moment the fear ate into his resolve and blended. It felt like madness in his guts. He was going skull fuck that son of a bitch while he squealed. It was official. And it was going to be the last goddamn thing he did.

"Or you choose! You choose…her or you?"

It was the moment Chris realized they were both wearing flashing devices around their necks. He could taste the salty flavor of fear on his tongue. It left him bitter and tired. For the first time? He felt old and used up and over it.

He was himself again and he knew now what he'd been trying to find in Zoe. Something else. Anything else. SOMETHING.

They kept calling him a hero.

And maybe he was. Maybe he had been once. Though the designation of that was stupid. He wasn't a hero. He'd given up everything in his fucking life to fight a never ending battle. He wasn't a hero. He was a warrior too tired to want to fight anymore. When did it end?

He'd spent twenty fucking years beating back the power of Umbrella and now?

Now!?

He was WORKING WITH THEM.

The absolute irony wasn't lost on him. It was surreal. It was so stupid it was like waking up to find out he wasn't himself anymore. Like he had a different face and body and someone had just stripped away everything that had made him Chris Redfield (*cough*). Did they think they could tell him to work in conjunction with the company that had RUINED HIS LIFE and not meet with resistance?

The weeks before the Baker mission had been him throwing things. It was tantrums and fighting and refusals. He'd stood toe to toe with the other eleven heads of the BSAA and threatened to quit, to leave, to take his portion of the company and retire. It wasn't idle.

And it wasn't meant to be.

Jill had cornered him, begging, pleading. Finish it, she'd said, finish this mission. You're Chris Redfield. You don't quit. You can't quit now. FINISH IT.

So, he was here.

He was finishing it.

He'd get them Lucas and the ties to The Connections. He'd help them track the power behind Eveline. He'd do that.

But he was done.

He was finished.

The face that stared back at him from the mirror? It didn't even LOOK like Chris Redfield anymore! He was an old guy with too many lines and wrinkles and not enough fucking laughter.

That skinny little thing that had slipped into the dark to save him? There was laughter there. She just…she made him laugh. She didn't ask for anything but that.

He loved her.

And it was a crazy.

It was stupid.

And it was done.

Whatever it meant. It was done.

He didn't know what happened after this. But he knew it had her in it. Somewhere. She was in it.

He shifted and Nadia spoke, so softly, "We watched Damian go down in the street that day in New York, Red. You remember that?"

Gruffly, Chris intoned, "I remember."

"I couldn't do shit then to help him. But he knew the deal. And I know it now."

His throat closed up. His chest seized, "Nadia…don't."

"It's you, boss. You liar. You fake. It's always been you. Stop this sumbitch and go get that skinny little thing you're chasin. Get the fuck out of here and save the day. It's what you do. Do it. And let me do this for you…and the BSAA. You get out of here? You get Kennedy – like in New York – get him. And bring him back here and rip a hole in this fucking place. Kick a grenade into the mess of it and blow it wide open. Promise me."

He shook his head denying. "Don't."

"It's the right thing. You know it is. Get your hands on this little piece of shit and obliterate him. Promise me."

"I promise."

Nadia called out, "ME! You little weaselly faced fuck stick! ME! You better make sure I DIE. Because if I live? I'm going to make sure you die like the pathetic little pervert you are, pretzel wrapped on yourself with your dick stuffed up your ass."

"Oh! She's FEISTY! I sure do like her! But I don't like her mouth! She talks like a WHORE! And guess what whores give!?"

Chris shook his head, denying. Denying. DENYING. It wouldn't change a damn thing.

His throat seized. He whispered, "Don't."

"HEAD!"

And the POP of sound was so loud. It was wet. It was three beeps and a long squeal of sound. And then? Eruption. She gasped and her head exploded in a burst of brain, blood, bone and teeth. Pieces of her covered his hair, his neck, the side of his face. It was a wet squelch and splatter of gore. It rocked their bound arms, it tossed her dying body into spasms behind him. It flopped her corpse and brought his mouth open on a small keen of grief.

He'd known her for ten years.

And now?

Gone.

She was just gone.

Dead.

Like the popping of a water balloon. And she wouldn't laugh at his bad jokes again. She wouldn't spend two hours laughing about Breaking Bad. She wouldn't dissect the Presidential Election and the ramifications of a Republican led Congress.

Dead.

"You get it, hero!? WHORES GIVE HEAD! OH, LAWD! OH GAWD! Somebody STOP me! I'm on a roll!"

His voice came now, so quiet, so low, it barely registered against Lucas' hyena laughter. "You're dead. I'm gonna put you down like a rabid dog. You're finished."

"What's THAT, hero!? You TAUNTING the guy with the remote to that bomb around your neck? Noooo. That would be fucking stupid. Try again: What did you say?"

Chris lifted his head, face flecked with blood and brains. He laughed, low and scary. "Run and hide, you fucking coward. Run. Because if you don't hit that button right this second? I won't just kill you…I'll pull you apart a piece at a time and laugh while you scream."

"You think you scare me!? You ain't nuthin but muscles and piss and wind, dude. Nuthin. You think you can beat me at MY OWN GAME!?"

"I've played games with smarter men than you, you asshat. Ask Albert Wesker what happens to men that try to play games with me."

"Oh yeah! I heard about that shit! AN RPG! Right up his ass right? GROSS! You gave him the last fucking he ever wanted huh? But guess what, hero? Ain't no RPG's here waitin for ya. JUST ME! You think you can stop me?!"

Chris laughed, loud and dark, "No. I KNOW I can."

"I LIKE IT. I like it. Alright. Ok. GAME ON. Come find me, you old bastard. AND PROVE IT!"

The device at his wrists where they were bound to Nadia's beeped and disengaged. Now he just needed to get the duct tape off. His head rolled, he glanced down at his vest. His knife was still strapped to him. But getting to it wasn't happening with his arms behind him and stuck to a corpse.

His eyes scanned the room, looking for other possibilities.

A desk with a stapler and a computer screen. A door to one side half cracked. He was still in the mines, clearly. Although where? He didn't fucking know.

Shifting, Chris rose slowly to his feet. Nadia's body clung heavily to him as he dragged her on his back like Quasimodo. Her legs tried to tangle bonelessly as he walked toward the table.

He wasn't sure what he was going to do. But it didn't matter. There was no hope and no time for it anyway.

The door opened to the room where he dwelled.

It squeaked and moved on rusty hinges.

And he was face to face with one of the taloned fungus monsters from the shield room. He was bound, dragging a body, and face to face with something he couldn't fight. How did he fight it!?

It squealed and raced at him, throwing its massive taloned fist at his head.

Without thinking, Chris threw himself backward. He hit the floor on his butt, Nadia's body splattered and made crunching noises, and he kicked over the table in front of him as he landed. It threw the computer and the stapler like a popcorn maker. It spun across the floor and smashed into the rushing monster.

The impact sent it staggering.

Chris rolled right and scrambled to his feet. He ran for the door behind it while it teetered.

And he'd never make it.

It made a swipe for him, he drove a hip kick at it at the same time, and the talon went right into Nadia's body. It hit her side and burst free of her with a geyser of sticky blood.

It saved his life but he was now bound to the monster trying to kill him.

It lifted them up in tandem, raising them fast and sharp over its ugly face. It shook them like maracas, tossing Chris' head around painfully on his neck. He kicked it in the face while he dangled – twice.

And it threw them.

It threw him and Nadia's body.

They hit the door, it was thrown wide, and they kept on going. There was nothing on the other side by a railing. Nadia's body took the hit of it, they were flipped over it painfully, and plummeted to the floor beneath. A console caught them and cushioned the fall. It sparked and burst from the weight of their combined bodies.

And Chris rolled the second they were still.

Nadia's body was bleeding all over him now. He staggered beneath the weight of it as the thing in the room burst out after him. It ran for the stairs instead of jumping over…which was interesting and implied intelligence he hadn't expected.

Chris wobble ran as fast as he could for the red shutter door across from him. It was half up and seemed stuck that way. He dove, felt the air whistle where that clawed swipe from the monster bisected the moldy air above him, and skidded on his face through the small opening.

The thing ducked after him.

It grabbed his booted foot that he swung at its snarling face. It twisted and the pain roared up his leg and out of his mouth in a shout of rage and denial. It was going to break his fucking hip like some old man.

It lifted him and smashed he and Nadia's body into the shutter behind it. Once, twice, three times and the clang of metal and flesh was so loud, so painful, so terrible that it was like a gong in the quiet air. His body protested, shouting with pain and trying to tell him he was fucked. He was done. He couldn't kill it, he couldn't even FIGHT it. He was screwed.

Nadia's body took most of the impact. It splatter painted the shutter door behind their swinging bodies like a kid cut loose on an easel. Red, red, and smears of purple goop and brains. The hole of her neck spurted gushes of the red stuff all over the place with each strike. It bathed Chris' face, it soaked the monster beneath them, it baptized as she bled bringing his rage out of his roaring mouth now in a battle cry that rattled the rafters.

And the monster threw him again. He shot through the dark like an arrow from a bow, spinning and feeling the cold on his fevered face. They came down and slid, Nadia first and Chris in the final skid. It tore up his uniform at the arm and ate at his flesh beneath it. The pain brought the rage back and left common sense behind.

When they slid to a stop, Chris tried to jerk them to their feet again. Nadia's legs were broken now. Her left leg was done. It was hamburger. It was blood and slop from the knee down. Jesus Christ. He didn't want to know what the rest of her looked like.

He staggered to one knee, shaking, as his body told him he was in rough shape.

The monster came barreling toward him.

He tried to get back up and knew it was done. He was done. It was over.

The door to his right was kicked open so hard it that it smashed the wall beyond it in a scream of metal. One of his men stepped through, gun raised. Chris went to his face on the floor and waited for it.

The gun went off. The rapid concussion of sound lit the air. The monster roared as it was assaulted with heavy 5.56 rounds. He breathed, trembling, feeling Nadia bleed all over him.

And finally, the silence spilled around them.

The agent jerked at his back. He heard the rip of the duct tape and felt Nadia rolled off his back to the floor beside him. He tried to get up and put the feeling back in his arms but the grief closed around his throat and came out in a small sound instead.

There was a clunk and a helmet was set on the floor beside them.

"Oh, suga'. Suga'. It's a'right. It's a'right. I'm sorreh. I tried to get here sooner. I swear. Chris? It's ok now. I promise."

Her hands were pulling him up, checking him, rubbing at him. Under his vest, over his face, wiping blood and looking to see what was his. What was she doing here!? He didn't care. He didn't care anymore.

"Chris…you a'right? It get you? Suga'?"

He shook his head and took her face. Zoe echoed the move, smearing filth and rot and blood around on his chiseled jaw. "Ah got here soon as ah could. Ah swear. Got lost out there a little. This mine is a fuckin maze, yeh? That peeschwank brutha of mine. I'm gonna k—"

He kissed her.

She'd wondered if he ever would again.

Her body collapsed into him. Her arms scrambled around his shoulders and his head. On his knees, he jerked her into him and tried to eat her face.

Zoe thought: she'd never in her life had a man kiss her like that. Like she was the best thing in the world. Or the only thing in the world. He was so big, so much, he took over everything he touched. And she didn't care. She craved him.

When they finally came up for air, Zoe gasped, "Ok. OK. Oh, mah stars. Haha. Oh."

Her face was so pink. It was pink from ears to eyes and lips. He let her go, breathing shallow.

"Thank you. Fuck. Thank you. I thought I was done."

"Ah came to get yeh. Ah'm so sorry about your friend there. She's…she's in a bad way."

He watched her move. She found a tarp against the far wall. Curious, he watched her cover up Nadia's body.

She covered it, so he wouldn't have to see it.

Touched, Chris got to his feet.

Zoe touched the blinking collar around his throat. Their eyes held in the dim light from the wall. "…oh gawd."

"Yeah. He's got the remote. I don't know how long I've got here. He's gonna hit that button when he's bored or taking a shit or just feels like it. We have to find him. We have to stop him."

Zoe nodded desperately. "Ah won't let him kill you."

"You gonna stop a bomb? Little brat. Not even you can't do that."

"You don't know what ah'm capable of…to protect what's mine."

Oh.

Amused, he lifted a brow at her. "That's a little possessive."

"Sorreh. No time for bullshit. You're mine. Let's find that sumbitch before he tries to take you away. We've got unfinished business him and ah. Ah'm gonna enjoy killin him."

She offered him the assault rifle.

He took it and offered back his knife from his vest.

She watched him check it, clear it, and rack it. She realized she liked this look on him. What was it? Soldier? It was something. She liked it. He was sexy, no getting around that, she'd known that ten minutes after meeting him. But this was different.

There was a confidence here that he'd never had before.

This was his stomping ground. It was his M.O. It was his thing. She realized he was a hero after all. A big one. And now?

Maybe she was too.

There was a door hanging open before them. It offered a small set of stairs down into some kind of stone cellar. Chris met her eyes.

"You ready to end this?"

Zoe nodded. She touched his face. She studied his eyes.

Still him.

Still the guy in the chair.

Each one was Chris Redfield. Each was the same guy. Each was the hero.

And now they were going to stop Lucas. Now SHE was going to save HIM.

So maybe she was the hero too.

They eased together into the stairwell to try to thwart him for the last time.

Yeah, maybe she was the hero.

And it was time to save Chris Redfield.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Note:

A virus. A battle. A bullshit villain about to get his ass kicked. And a pretty girl about to be a hero.

She's not a hero.

Or is she?

What makes a hero anyway? Let's find out.

…

VI. Love is the Hero

DULVEY, LOUISIANA, 2017

The stairs spilled them into the dark. But it didn't last long.

Strapping on the helmets they carried, they were granted nightvision. It was like viewing the world through green fog. Zoe paused, scanning the narrow passages with the weird green filter tossed it all.

It somehow made the cave simultaneously less and more scary.

Zoe murmured, gently, "He'vy."

And it echoed in their helmets.

A voice came back, female, and amused, "Redfield, you earned yourself a roadie, it seems."

Chris laughed, lightly, "Looks that way. Zoe? The voice in your ear is the utterly underappreciated, always fantastic, most often not seen…Jill Valentine."

Zoe smiled a little, "Ah. That Jill."

Curious, Jill's voice came back to her, "You know about me?"

Studiously, Zoe returned, "Not exactly. When Chris wasn't….Chris….he mentioned a pah'tner. He mentioned you."

Impressed, Jill replied, "You remembered me even with your brains scrambled, big guy?"

Chris chuckled, "Apparently. For the record, you're pretty hard to forget, Valentine."

"Aw. You heartbreaker. Save the sweet talk for someone who likes big muscles and dirty looks, would ya?"

Zoe pursed her lips inside her helmet as they walked. Chris spoke and joked with the girl in their ears easily, effortlessly. It was the kind of dialogue which told the story of years of perpetual companionship. Each word, each laugh, each carelessly flirty remark…it grated on her nerves.

She was jealous.

And it didn't sit well with her.

They turned into a small tunnel and Jill signed off to track their progress. As they moved, Chris kept glancing at his arm. There was a device attached to him that was reading the mold content in the cave. Zoe watched it fluctuate and flare a warning at him.

He said, quietly, "Come here."

She moved to his side and he clicked something on her helmet. It fired off a filter that activate with a hiss of pressure. She could suddenly breathe clean air. Impressed, she eyed him inside the helmet. "What's floating around us?"

"Spores. And something pretty nasty from the look of it. Keep that high grade filter on at all times, ok? I don't know if the vaccine we made for you works against this shit or not. But let's not take chances here."

Zoe said nothing. She just nodded and stepped around him to keep moving into the cavern.

Brow lifted, Chris followed her.

They moved in companionable silence for a while. At one point, the mine spilled them out to result in the necessity of pushing carts to break barriers and open new tunnels. He followed the map on his arm display. She stayed close but quiet.

Jill Valentine popped up in their ears occasionally with guidance.

The more they spoke, the quieter Zoe became.

As they turned into a small tunnel and came to an elevator, Chris finally spoke to her. "What's wrong?"

She eyed his helmeted face.

Shaking her head, she waited with him for the elevator to arrive.

He stood there, staring at her. At least she thought he was staring at her. Between the night-vision and the helmet, it was so hard to tell. She felt like Storm Troopers trying to read each other. It was weird.

They stepped into the narrow elevator car and rode it upward. It chugged along, quiet but steady. He tried again, "Zoe? What?"

She shook her head.

The elevator opened and they were suddenly in a factory or something. There were steel beams and barrels of god knew what piled all around them. The room was narrow but square, the floor was makeshift and mostly scraps of sheet metal. Zoe started forward and he grabbed her arm and hated her.

"Wait."

"What?"

"Wait, Zoe and look."

She looked and barely made out the hissing lines of lasers in the dark. Her gaze shifted around the room, curious. In the middle of the makeshift maze of lasers, a body lay. Chris called to it now, and his voice shook.

Concerned for him, Zoe wanted to comfort him, but she stood resolutely by his side.

The body shifted and gasped, gently. "Chris?"

"Gunner, you're alright?"

The body shifted again but was VERY careful to remain on its back. "I don't know. I'm surrounded by lasers in the middle of a rickety platform. I feel, maybe, I'm also subject to a trap here."

"Yeah…yeah…I agree." Chris shifted, "Give me a minute to see if I can shut these mother fuckers off, ok?"

"Sounds like a plan, Cap. Maybe you could…hurry?"

Chuckling dryly, Chris shifted under the first line of lasers. Zoe watched him move, ducked, and slink through. He was turning and shifting toward the lever on the wall. It was such a set up. It was so wrong. It was all going to go so, so wrong.

He caught the lever, tugged it down, and the lasers went off a pop and hiss of releasing electricity.

They were suddenly in a quiet dark.

Zoe helped up the man on his back. He studied her inside his helmet. She couldn't tell if he was handsome or young or white or black or Asian. He was just another storm trooper in the dark. She said, "I'm Zoe."

And he said, "Gunner. Nice to meetcha. Thank you. For coming."

She laughed a little, "You bet. You're alright?"

"I seem to be." He turned his head a little, "There's a ladder this way. I know because I've been laying here in the dark for…like a hundred years. I've been unable to do anything but look back and forth."

They followed him to the ladder. He asked, quietly, "You found Mendez or Oliveira?"

Chris shook his head, "No. Not yet. Any idea where they might be?"

Gunner shook his head in response as they reached the ladder. "Nope. Baker snatched us in the field. I went down first. I heard them shouting as I went down. I don't know what the hell he did with them."

They moved up the ladder one at a time. At the top, Gunner said, "He fit you with a bomb, Cap?"

Chris nodded, helping Zoe over a narrow ledge. They shifted down a small incline, spilling rock.

Gunner shook his head, "What's this dude's game here anyway?"

Zoe answered, "He's sick. He was always sick. Now he's worse. I don't know what he wants."

The voice in their ears said, "He wants test data for the Connections. The theory about him betraying them was right on. But the little son of a bitch is trying to get back into their good graces. Whatever game he's playing, it doesn't end well Chris."

They turned the corner and found a man dangling inside the room that waited. He was dangling and suspended from the ceiling. It seemed innocuous enough. He was bound at the arms and legs like a crucifixion. He was watching them with desperate eyes.

He shouted, "Leave me! Please!"

Gunner was already moving into the room. Chris was hot behind him.

The dangling man cried, "DON'T! IT'S A TRAP!"

And just like that, the trap was sprung.

The door sealed shut behind them. Zoe was trapped beyond the bars in the room they'd left behind. Behind her, a shutter lowered and something enormous and awful emerged. It was a fat bloated belly on a ten foot tall monster. It was wobbling on legs as big as tree trunks. It was an open mouth filled with fangs that dripped acid. And it's mouth was in the center of its bloated gut. It squealed like a pig and ran toward her.

Chris hit the bars between them, shouting, "RUN! ZOE, RUN!"

Gunner shouted, "Captain! OH GOD!"

And the loud whir of a buzz saw fired up. The room flashed. Mendez, bound in the chains, was weeping. And the buzz saw above his head was dropping steadily toward his face. It whirred, showing blood stained jagged teeth as it spun. Gunner started grabbing desperately for his bound friend.

But the wrists were secured with chains. The ankles locked with shackles.

The battle behind the bars raged on. Zoe was firing into the fat thing that chased her. The buzz saw was moving further down. And Lucas' voice echoed, "I warned you, you fucking hero! I WARNED YOU! You keep comin for me and I'll bounce your fucking head off the ceiling. In the mean time? I'm gonna watch you SCREAM! And as for my sister? You get to stand there and save NO ONE. Who's the fuckin hero now!?"

Chris roared it, "LUCAS! YOU FUCKING COWARD!"

"You got that right, hero! But guess what? The coward LIVES. The hero? He only gets to be a hero by dying like an idiot. Who you gonna save, hero? The girl or the comrade? I'll give you one choice. The other one is dead where they stand. PICK. And say sayonara -you stupid bastard!"

Gunner was shouting. Zoe was out of bullets.

And Chris was out of time.

"CHOOSE!" Lucas taunted, "Before you LOSE THEM BOTH!"

Mendez held his gaze through the helmet. And he breathed it, softly, "Get the girl, Captain. GET HER. I was dead the moment he took me. Go save her."

Gunner screamed now, grabbing at him, "NO! Mendez! NO!"

Chris answered, "I'll avenge you, I swear to god."

Mendez, shaking and weeping in fear, nodded, "I know you will. Now GO! HURRY!"

Chris turned and grabbed the gate, "Let me out…you FUCK!"

The gate went up, the buzz saw came down, Gunner screamed in rage and the world went red in blood. It was bathed in it, splashed in it, washed in it. It was blood and screaming and horror. Mendez was crunching and screaming and jerking. His face was obliterated in a spinning symphony of death and despair. Gunner fell to one knee weeping, feeling the numbness of bone deep rage; Chris rolled under the gate and jerked his gun up.

And the fat monster grabbed Zoe by her face.

It lifted her while she kicked and screamed.

It echoed in their helmets.

He fired into the fat monster and punctuated it with the roar of a battle cry that permeated the fiber of his being. Gunner came out beside him, carrying Mendez's rifle that was soaked in his blood. They filled the fat thing full of rounds while it squealed and staggered.

Zoe was dropped to her belly and she scrambled away.

She grabbed the rifle as she ran back toward them. Chris shouted, above the rapid thunder of gun fire, "Grab a spare mag off my vest and reload!"

She did, quick and efficient.

And then she took up his other side. She wasn't terrible with the damn rifle. She could hit the big fat thing that turned to race toward them anyway. She filled it full of heavy rounds.

And it finally went to its back on the dirty ground with a thud and rumble like an earthquake.

Gunner's ragged breathing filled their helmets.

Lucas' voice echoed, "WOO! What a game! Should we keep playing?! How about we see how fast you can run!? What do you think? BAM!"

Chris' neck beeped. Zoe glanced at the device there in horror.

It said 10 minutes.

It was counting down.

She breathed it now, "Oh gawd. No. NO."

Gunner was already running for the far shutter. "Captain! We can disable it! I disabled mine! Follow me! HURRY!"

They rushed through the open shutter into the dark beyond. He led them down a wet embankment and into a warehouse. It was filled with explosives. It was horrifying how much. From TNT to C-4, the room was filled with death. Some was strapped to mannequins that had been exploded for fun and for trial and error. Some was strapped to barrels filled with smoking liquid. Some was strapped to walls and the ceiling.

The hair on the back of Zoe's neck stood up.

Gunner was tearing the lid off one of the barrels. "We need to disable the mechanism. We can freeze it."

Chris answered, calmly, "It's on my neck, Gunner. I can't put my head in a barrel of nitrous oxide."

Gunner glanced over his shoulder him. "Sir, we just…we need to find a way to get the liquid on the device without getting it on your skin."

Chris, calm and patient, replied, "How? It will freeze anything it touches. There's no way to do it. It's done."

Zoe shook her head. She grabbed one of the mannequins and jerked its head off. Curious, Chris watched her move.

The timer on his helmet said four minutes.

She dipped the mannequin head in the liquid. She raised it up. The liquid turned to vapor and the head was frozen. Scooping it wasn't going to work.

Chris watched her, calm, still.

Gunner was searching the room for something to use as well.

Chris spoke, gently, "Listen to me – it's done. You two, find Carlos. Stop Lucas. This is as far as I go."

Jill's voice echoed in their helmets, "Redfield! Don't you fucking DARE give up! Find something! NOW!"

Chris answered, complacent, "What? What Jill? What's good enough?"

There was nothing they could use that could withstand the liquid well enough. They needed something made to resist cold. They needed something that could transport the liquid. Zoe was panicking. Her breathing was ragged and thick. WHAT!? She wasn't a scientist. What would work!? WHAT!?

The timer on his neck said one minute.

Terrified, she ignored him when he spoke gently. "Zoe…"

"No."

"Zoe, stop. Please."

She shook her head. Gunner had given up. He put one hand on Chris' shoulder, shaking. "I'm so sorry, Captain. I'm sorry."

In their ears, Jill said, "Zoe….your helmet."

Of course.

The helmet was MADE for it.

THE HELMET.

Zoe jerked hers off. She dunked it in the liquid. Chris shouted at her, "NO! ZOE, the SPORES!"

And she saw the timer on his neck say fifteen seconds. NO.

There was NO MORE TIME. She gasped, "I'm so sorreh, suga'."

She raised the helmet. Gunner backed away. Chris lifted his hands in horror, "Zoe! Don-"

She threw the contents of her helmet all over his neck. It froze where it struck. It froze everything it touched. It touched his skin between his helmet and the device and burned. It burned him where it touched. And he….screamed.

She'd never heard someone scream like that.

She knew the pain had to be excruciating. She was so sorry for it. But he was ALIVE. And the timer was frozen at five seconds.

Gunner was already grabbing his screaming Captain. Zoe swung her rifle and smashed the butt into the frozen device. Chris stopped screaming so suddenly she was afraid. She was terrified. But his vitals were strong on his suit. He was alive. Just unconscious. The pain had put him down like a sedative.

She struck the device again. It cracked and shivered. A third hit and it smashed away from his throat. She ripped it free and threw it into the smoking barrel of freezing Nitrous Oxide.

His neck was a mess beneath it. It was welted and raw. He'd scar. Badly.

But he was ALIVE.

Gunner dug into his hip pocket. He pulled a syringe of liquid. Zoe glanced at his helmet. He said, "It's ok. It's for pain." He jabbed it into his Chris' outer thigh. Zoe took the tiny tube of cream he handed her and rubbed it gently all over the burns on Chris' neck. It was bubbled up the side of his neck. She couldn't see under his helmet to know how far up it had trickled.

The first tear slipped out and down her cheek. She made a small sob and Gunner put his hand on her shoulder. His helmet offered no comfort. But his touch did.

He said, "He'll be ok. He's survived way worse. He's alive because of you."

Zoe nodded, stroking the cream over the burns. "I would never hurt him. Ever. Look what I did."

Gunner rubbed her arm, shaking his head, "Not you. LUCAS. Not you. You saved his life. Remember that."

Lucas voice echoed around them, "Well PLAYED! The hero lives another day! And what about the sidekicks? WAIT FOR IT….BOOOOOM!"

There was a series of beeps. Loud, close, echoing.

In horror, the room around them started to count down. But there was no time to run. There was no time at all.

They couldn't do anything but brace for it as the world exploded around them.

Gunner grabbed her arm, he grabbed Chris' vest in the other hand, and he threw them toward the depression in the floor. There wasn't room for more than two of them.

Zoe grappled to hold on and he cried, "Find Carlos! Stop Lucas!"

"GUNNER!"

He jerked his helmet off and threw it down to her. "Save him."

"WAIT!"

The explosions kept on going. She had no choice but to hunker down in the small depression and cover Chris with her body. Gunner was obliterated in a burst of fire and light. He didn't even scream. Zoe curled around Chris' still body, shaking.

The tears started while the world burned.

She wept copiously into Chris' vest. Light and fire kept on going. It was explosions and endless cacophonous roars. The clatter of stone and bursting rock settled all around them.

And finally, finally, finally…the world went quiet save for the last vestiges of rocks thunking down in a swan song.

The room was reduced to little more than rubble and the hidey hole where they cowered.

Gunner was gone. The room was gone. The world was smoking ashes.

Were they trapped? Were they screwed?

They kept losing everyone. She wasn't saving anyone. She was no hero. She was the girl who threw acid on Chris Redfield.

She was just a stupid little redneck running for her life.

She'd killed them all. Her family had killed them all. There was no way to set that right. No way to make it ok. She made a small sound and started sobbing gently into her hands.

The smoky air was acrid. It was punctuated by the quiet sound of her weeping. There was no more hope; she thought desperately, they were going to die here. There were no heroes. Just people trying so hard to survive.

She had to leave him here. She had to leave him safe in this little depression. Maybe…maybe if Lucas thought he was dead he'd focus on her. Maybe he'd focus on her and Chris could escape.

Maybe THIS was how she was his hero.

She rose, shaking a little. He'd come out of that chair and changed her life. He'd saved it. This was how she saved him.

She slipped on Gunner's helmet. She picked up Mendez rifle. And she stood over their Captain.

She said, gently, "I'm going to stop him. Live. Please. I love you."

And she left him in amongst the rubble.

It was the bravest thing she'd ever done.

Sometimes, that's how you made a hero…by walking away when you wanted to keep holding on. And protecting the only thing in the world that mattered.

As she emerged out into the empty warehouse, that voice echoed around her. "OHHHHH! She comes out ALONE! Where's the hero, sis?! Where'd he go?"

She spoke, loud and calm, "You know where he is. He's gone. You know that. They both are. It's just us now, Lucas. Just you and me. So let's end it."

The harsh laughter grated on her nerves. "Why not?"

The door at the top of a long steel stair case opened with a creaking groan. "Come on up to my web, said the spider to the fly. Let's see if you can save the last soldier boy alone. Shit. Far as I can tell, dude is fucked. He had half a shot with the hero running around. You though? You just a two faced skinny bitch without a prayer. But why not!? Give it your best shot. At least I get the fun of watching you DIE."

And maybe that was how you made a hero too. You gave them a bad guy worth killing. You gave them a purpose greater than themselves.

She couldn't right the wrongs done to those they'd lost. But she could do this.

She could stop Lucas.

And she could save Chris Redfield.

It turned out...love was all it took to make a hero after all. And it was the last thing she had to offer him.

Love...and Lucas' head on a platter.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note:

The end of a monster? The beginning of what happens when a hero saves the day. And the promise of something scary amongst the victory.

One more from the end I think, depending.

VII. Unlikely Hero

DULVEY, LOUISIANA, 2017

The warehouse was cold. It was freezing. It was endless.

She eased open the door, heart hammering.

She hadn't found the missing Carlos. She'd found nothing but endless papers with information on what Lucas was doing in this pit. Playing with science he didn't understand, manipulating data he couldn't begin to process, turning two sides against each other when the forces he stood between were greater than he could even begin to imagine.

Even if he survived his game with Chris Redfield, did he think the powers he'd betrayed would leave him alive? He was dead. He was dead and running. If the good guys didn't get him, the bad guys would. Surely he knew that.

What did they call that? When you were damned if you did or damned if you didn't?

Aloud, Zoe mused, "A cluster fuck."

Yeah. A cluster fuck. That's what was happening here.

Lucas was fucked.

The room she was in was cold and full of shipping containers. The air was puffy white clouds as you breathed. It was pipes along the ceiling containing what? Spores most likely, like they'd come up against countless times. She'd heard Lucas talking.

She'd heard him whining and bitching. He'd said, "I had trouble with mother fucking Chris Redfield and his band of retarded turds. I'm getting you what you want but after that? We're donesies. We're caput. We're deuces. Peace and chicken grease, ya hear? I'm quitsies and over it."

Zoe's hands shook a little as she aimed the rifle around the room.

Clear? Isn't that what they said when it was empty.

She turned back to return to the hallway she'd come through.

And Lucas punched her in the face.

In hindsight, she should have seen it coming.

He was good at nothing in life but sneaking up on people. The spineless shit that he was, he wasn't anything but a coward of the first water. He'd never face to face you. He'd just stab you from behind.

Zoe went over and lost the rifle. The hit was solid. It was all face. She felt her nose burst and throw blood with a crunch of cartilage. She went right onto her back and slid across the floor. He hit her so hard she was lifted off her feet and thrown backward.

Her vision wavered and went red at the edges.

Lucas' ugly face appeared above her. "BITCH! I warned you! You can't even take a punch! How the HELLLLL do you think you're gonna fight me? Ain't you got the memo? I'm IMMORTAL!"

He flourished the knife in his hand. Zoe stuck her boot up and kicked him hard in the belly. The knife missed her throat but hit her shoulder. It went in and stuck there, thrumming while she screamed.

Lucas jerked it clean in a whip of blood and Zoe screamed again, kicking at him as he dove for her face. She slapped him twice and the blade cut her hands as she blocked. He shrieked like a banshee, whooping.

"Little CUNT! I told you! You ain't a hero! A hero doesn't lie there screaming!" He straddled her and backhanded her. Lucas drove the knife into left breast whooping. "Like poppin a BALLOON!"

She couldn't stop the screaming. She tried. But she screamed every time that knife landed. Zoe flopped and drove her knee into his groin. He yelled in rage and punched her again in the face even as he reeled off her.

This one stopped her screaming like a switch was thrown. Her mouth burst with blood as her head whipped sideways and bounced off the floor. Her vision was bubbly now and spotty. She figured she was dead where she lay.

Her hands scrambled to pull her toward the gun a few feet away.

Lucas was laughing. She heard him coming. She left a trail of blood as she crawled.

Her fingers slipped against the gun…and Lucas flipped her over before she could grab it. He picked her up and shook her like a damnit doll. Her head whipped around, her teeth snapped together, she grabbed his face with her hands and drove her thumbs toward his eyes.

With a roar of rage, he threw her. She went up, she went out, and she smashed into a container and slid down. She slumped, shaking, and heard him coming for her again. Her hands tried to find anything to help her.

They slid against something cold. Her nails scraped over the cylinder.

A fire extinguisher.

She grasped it desperately and Lucas appeared in her face. "What now, little bitch?! You about done?"

The knife imbedded in her neck, Zoe shoved the fire extinguisher in his face, and she pulled the release on it. He shrieked, stumbling back as she blasted him, and the hot wet blood spilled down her chest and arm. She slumped left, defeated, and the spray kept right on blowing him back from her.

Lucas roared, "WHORE! You think this is how you beat me!? I CAN'T DIE! What's it gonna take to hammer that in your stupid head!? You ain't got what it takes to kill me! I'm gonna fuck you UP!"

The fire extinguisher ran dry. Lucas slapped off the white covering his body and started for her again. "See?! Your luck just ran out! God damnit, Zoe, why won't you just lay down and die!?"

Zoe was shaking so badly. She was in a pool of her own blood. She was slumped to one side and blind in one eye from where he'd punched her. But she lifted her hand, trembling, and gave him the finger.

Lucas laughed, wildly, dancing where he stood. "You are so BRAVE! How'd you get so brave!? Fucking that hero?! He nut up in ya and fill ya full of courage? He got bravery in his balls? Hard to believe, since he hits like a BITCH!"

Zoe slumped completely to the floor. Lucas drew back his boot to kick her and a voice said, "A bitch huh? You're about to be mine."

Lucas spun back and got a fist to the face for it.

The first one spun him full circle, the second –an uppercut clearly delivered by a man used to driving punches into skinny dumbasses – threw him to his back on the floor. And from the floor Lucas squealed, "You're supposed to be DEAD!"

"Not today, you little rat faced fuck. Only one of us dies today."

Lucas kicked at him from the floor and Chris caught his ankle in his hands. The skinny man struggled and the wet pop of bone was loud. Lucas squealed in pain as his ankle snapped.

He scrambled his hand on the floor for the fallen gun of Zoe's.

Chris kicked it away and stomped on his wrist, crushing it.

Lucas squeaked like a leaky balloon, bouncing and shouting, "You stupid SOLDIER BOY! YOU SHIT FACED HERO! WHAT KINDA HERO TORTURES THE BEATEN!?"

"The kind with a grudge, you disgusting sack of shit. You put your hands on what's mine?"

"She's MY sister, you ugly mountain mutha fucka! MINE!"

"She was never yours, you pathetic sack of shit. She's mine. And for every time you touched her, every time you hurt her or even thought about her, I'm gonna put a bullet in your balls."

Chris turned the pistol to his Lucas' groin. The rage on him was cold. It was lethal. Lucas flopped and fought, panicking. The smell of piss filled the freezing chamber.

Humiliation complete, Lucas Baker had pissed himself in fear.

As good as his words, he shot Lucas Baker three times in the groin while he screamed like a girl. High pitched and horrible, it punctuated the silence in the room while he grabbed at himself and his blood and urine soaked wasteland that had once been his balls.

Chris shifted the muzzle of the gun to his squealing face.

Lucas lifted his hands to cower, shrieking, "Mama! MAMA! HELP ME PUHLEASE!"

The pistol in his hands went off twice and Lucas' eyes were obliterated by heavy caliber rounds at close range.

He shrieked, he flopped, and Chris shot him again in the wide open maw of his squealing mouth.

He went silent, shaking.

And was still.

Chris moved quickly.

He slid across the floor on his knees to grip her and pull her into his arms. She was covered in blood. The horror of it pounded in his skull like drums.

"Zoe! Why?!"

She slid against him bonelessly. Her mouth was slow, she was cold. She whispered, "I saved the hero. Stop Lucas…Chris…stop them…" Her fingers lifted to brush the burns on his neck. She felt the well of tears, "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry… find my gun…hurry..Chris...oh god….behind you…" Her hand grabbed his and put it on the knife at her throat.

Chris jerked the knife free and saw the reflection in her eyes as they slid closed.

Lucas had risen from the pool of his own blood as nothing that had ever once been human.

Chris laid Zoe down in her blood, shaking.

He rose and turned.

And faced down what had once been Lucas Baker with a pistol and a knife.

Lucas' mutated form was huge. It was twelve feet tall and shiny. It had claws for arms and lumps and warts and bumps over its muscled, molded form. It had a pulsing red mass for a face and one deep in its warped chest cavity.

It spoke, somehow, in a human voice, "This is how it feels to BECOME! I shoulda let Evie turn me before! What you think hero?! Who's the BITCH NOW!?"

And the thing that had once been Lucas Baker, raced for the hero of Raccoon City with a rolling roar of repressed hunger.

It echoed off the walls, and signaled the start of the greatest battle Chris Redfield had ever faced.

…

Floating in the dark, Zoe Baker was pretty sure she was dead.

She could hear the fighting. She could hear the snarling. She could hear the gunfire. She could hear Chris Redfield shouting and defending her.

She heard the crunch and snap of punching. She heard the roar of the thing that had been her brother…and hadn't been her brother in a long time.

She heard the door thrown open and bodies spill in.

The little medic, Chambers, was having her moved.

She went into the dark and popped out to hear snaps of conversation.

"—tachy 150…BP bottoming out! Come ON, Zoe! Stay with me no—"

The dark again and the quiet.

And then?

"—ink you need to see this, Chris."

He was ALIVE. Her heart heard that. His name. It meant he was ALIVE.

"Zoe? Are you awake? Her heart rate just skyrocketed. Chris? Come here and talk to her. Calm her down."

"Zoe?"

Her heart. It wanted him. She made a small sound of pain.

A hand on her arm, soothing her.

"Talk to her, Chris. She's tachying up again. We need her to relax or she'll get hypertensive again."

"Zoe? It's me. It's Chris. I'm here. I'm here, honey. Just breathe. Breathe and rest. It's ok now. It's done. It's over."

Her heart. It loved him. She made a small sound of relief.

"That's working. She's calming."

She came back from the darkness to more talking.

"-at'd she tell you?"

"That she was twenty."

Sounds of something. Sounds and movement. A sigh. And hands on her again. Touching her belly and her chest.

"She's not even that old. Bio here says she's eighteen."

A shift of movement. "You hear me?"

"I heard you."

"She's EIGHTEEN, Chris. A baby. Rebecca said you've been fucking her, is that true?"

More shifting. And his voice, cold and calm, "That's none of your business, Carlos. Or anyone else's. Go brief the rest of the team. And inform them that any personal questions regarding my private affairs are grounds for dismissal."

"….you can't make the gossip stop by being a hard ass, Redfield."

"Get out. Now."

The door closing. And Rebecca's voice now, "You love her."

Silence.

She spoke again, "You love her. You really do."

He finally said, "It doesn't matter. She's ok?"

"More than. She's –"

The dark bled away and Zoe finally opened her eyes.

She was lying in a triage clinic that had started life as a tent. It was warm and moist in the tent. She turned her head to find her Uncle Joe lying on the cot beside her, sleeping. She was thrilled to know he was alive. She'd figured all the Baker's had died in the bayou. His big white beard bristled with each breath and snore.

The tent wavered and the sunlight brought in Rebecca Chambers. The medic looked fresh and clean in her uniform and hat. She moved to Zoe with a smile.

"Feeling better?"

Zoe shifted where she sat, looking at the little machine beside the bed offering her vitals back at her. She nodded, softly, "I'm good. Where's Chris?"

Rebecca smiled gently and patted her arm as she checked things on the machines around them, "He's gone. HQ probably putting things to bed. He left this morning."

Gone.

He'd just left. No goodbye. Nothing.

Because she'd fudged a few years off her age?

She'd figured if he knew she was barely eighteen that he he'd flip his lid. Feeling her heart in her throat, Zoe asked quietly, "Rebecca?"

The girl medic lifted her brows, jotting things on a clipboard, "Hmm?"

"…how old is he?"

Rebecca smiled at her, understanding written on her pretty face, "Does it matter?"

"No…not to me. But I gotta figure it does to him, ya know?"

Rebecca studied the other girl. There were familiar things about her that was for sure. She was pretty and so very young and so very in love with Chris Redfield. The medic could relate. She'd been there too once.

"It might. You lied about it, Zoe. So you must have known how he'd react."

"I panicked. We'd just…" She shifted, looking at her dirty hands, "We'd just made love. He was…panicking or something. Freaking out. I wanted to calm him down. So I fudged a few years."

Rebecca eyed her, feeling sorry for her. A sweet thing, so strong to have survived for years in a nightmare like she had, she was still somehow innocent and raw. How to explain the hard ass man she'd chosen to love?

Rebecca sought the right words, "Chris…he's not easy on a good day, Zoe. He values honesty above all things. He's very particular and big on rules. The rules say he shouldn't have slept with you in the first place: he broke that. It rankled for him and was the first chink in his chain. The second? The fact that he loves you."

They held eyes. Rebecca nodded, "Yeah. A lot I'd say. He's good with guns, is Redfield, not great with love. I'd suggest you give him some time to deal with it. He's a good man. One of the best. He'll come around. When he does? Just explain. That's all it will take."

Zoe slid off the bed, nodding a little. "I…have family close by. I'll go stay with them. I'm ok to travel?"

"You are. As is your Uncle when he wakes up. Should I tell him where to look?"

Zoe shook her head, moving to get her little bag by the wall where it sat. She looped it on her back. "Joe knows where to find me."

"What about Chris?"

Zoe shook her head again, sighing, "I knew when this started I wouldn't be able to keep him. He's done us both a favor and cut and run. Just…tell him I said sorreh, would ya? And thank you. He stopped Lucas?"

"Oh, yeah. Turned that little bastard into road pizza."

"Good. Gooood. You get what you need?"

"More than. We have days of data processing still to do here."

"Good. Then it wasn't all for nothing." Zoe eased out of the tent into the sunshine. She felt the heat on her face and breathed deep, "Tell him goodbye for me?"

"…you sure you want to end it this way?"

Zoe shrugged a little and moved toward the far side of the camp, "Can't end something that never really began, right? He wasn't a hero when I found him. Just a guy looking for a chance. I gave him that. He's free to be a hero again. I won't hold him back anymore. Thank you, Rebecca. For everything. I'm so glad ya'll found me. I'da been lost otherwise."

Rebecca watched her hit the path in her filthy clothes. She didn't ask for a change of them. Didn't ask for food or supplies or anything. She just set off in her ill-fitting shoes and dirty tank top. She had no clue what was still left in the bayou to stop her. But she was fearless. She could see the draw for Chris.

The skinny little thing had more guts and courage than men twice her size. She was all fight and survival. She was heart and strength and the will to do whatever it took to save the hero she loved so much. She was a good girl.

Rebecca took the report that the lab geek pushed into her hands.

She was a little anemic and vitamin D-deficient, pretty common on someone who had likely been starving for some time out here. Nothing a little OJ and TLC wouldn't fix. Her lab tests are all good other wise.

Rebecca bobbled the report, reading the bottom line.

Rebecca turned to the agent closest to her, "Get Redfield on the phone for me. And send out a search party for Zoe Baker to bring her back here."

Lord.

She was hoping they found her before he got back. Otherwise? He was going to be the scariest thing in this bayou, hands down.

Because Zoe Baker was perfectly healthy.

She was healthy as a horse and free of parasite.

Well, maybe not entirely free of parasite, because according to the blood work Rebecca had added out of habit, Zoe Baker was also pregnant.

And wandering around the possibly infested bayou alone.


	8. Chapter 8

Author's Note:

A short, sweet, wonderful little end. I loved this tiny little tale. Maybe, in some parts, some of the best stuff I've written. A totally obscure pair, but a super fun one to write. Thank you for taking this journey with me. It never fails to please me to have even a single person love what I write.

VIII. Ordinary Hero

RED SALT CREEK, LOUISIANA, 2017

The thing about Acadia Parish, was that you couldn't spit sideways without hitting a Baker.

They were everywhere down there.

Zoe didn't have to go far to find family.

She went over the river and through the woods (passed by her grandmother's house entirely) and found her cousin Celine and her husband, Stu. They had four kids and lived new the bayou but they had a spare room and were happy to let her stay until she got her bearings.

She was about three months into her life after losing her family and being shoved, not easily back into real life after living like a hermit in fear for so long, figuring out to function on a small part time job at the gas station that existed at one of three stop lights in town, walking down the street carrying her shoes after a ten hour shift, that she knew something was wrong.

She had to stop.

She had to think about it.

In one hand, she thought about it all the time. Her time with him.

She had dreams about him. She rolled over to feel him and find her bed empty. She did NOTHING but fantasize. He rode into town to save her.

He rode into town to kidnap her.

He rode into town to throw her over the dumpster and work and fuck her stupid.

She thought about him so much she started to hallucinate him everywhere she went. At the donut shop when she got coffee in the morning. At the fruit stand where she bought her apples after work. At the post office when she sent letters to her Uncle Joe.

He was all over the place.

She mourned, nightly, that he wasn't all over her.

It was a good thing she worked in a gas station. Because the second she knew what the problem was, she was in the bathroom peeing on a stick.

And her voice carried, startling a man buying eggs at the counter, "Feet pue tan!"

The man at the counter blinked. The other man laughed.

It was the equivalent of god damn, son of a bitch in English.

And it was.

It was a son of a bitch. Well...it was a baby in the belly of one.

She was knocked up.

All the stupid sexual decisions she'd ever made in her nineteen years on Earth, and this one - THIS- one turns into a baby.

One SINGLE night of sex with a guy she barely knew in the middle of the scariest night of her life. One. Single. Night.

Boom.

Baby.

The first few weeks she was mostly mad. The next few were easier. Because one day she woke up and realized she wasn't even sad about it. She was irritated that she couldn't just have a one night stand with a hot guy and walk away without having him shake up her ENTIRE world.

But she wasn't sad.

Why?

Because it was a part of him. She got to keep some part of him.

And, in one hand, it made her happy.

She was sitting on the crate behind the gas station, enjoying her apple on her lunch break. She was just showing in her little work smock. The pregnancy, living a normal life, it had put weight on her. She wasn't bone skinny anymore. She looked full in the face and the hips and the belly.

She looked soft.

She pictured him coming around the corner and seeing her. The sun on his salt and pepper hair and those muscles in a...blue...a blue shirt. And he'd say, "You little sneak, you think you could run away and I wouldn't come after you?"

Hollywood movie kissing came next. And then?

Well he'd throw her down to make her squeal and flop behind the gas station in broad daylight.

Naturally.

They'd get married in the little church down the road. Her Uncle Joe could give her away.

She'd wear her mama's wedding dress (which they'd find in the house she'd left behind completely untouched).

Happy Happy Joy Joy.

A car whizzed by. Three teenagers threw eggs at Phil's Barber Shop on the corner. There was shouting and squealing tires. And laughter as they roared away.

No handsome men in blue shirts today, it seemed.

And she was hallucinating again. Because she was pretty sure she'd seen him on her way to work over by the fruit stand. Pretty sure.

She laughed at herself and tossed her apple core on the ground.

She went to head back in and a voice said, "Pretty sure littering is a crime."

And NOW she was hallucinating voices too.

She turned. She froze. She blinked.

Arms crossed, shirt green (close enough), salt and pepper hair in the sunlight. The jeans were old and faded. The boots were scuffed and brown. The face?

Hidden by sunglasses and very, very, very blank.

She shifted.

And saying nothing, she moved toward him.

He watched her, brow lifted.

She lifted a hand and poked him, hard, in the chest.

He didn't flinch.

He also didn't disappear. So...

She said, "Holy moly, you're real."

And now he laughed.

Curious, he poked his sunglasses up on his head. "Last time I checked."

"What are you doing here?"

"Window shopping," Chris quipped, continuing to lean on the wall watching her, "What else?"

Zoe followed the line of his eyes. She covered her belly like she was naked. His mouth quirked.

He waited.

And she squeaked, "Ha. Right. That."

"Yeah. That."

Going with it, Zoe moved her hands, "Surprise?"

Oh. She was something else. He licked his teeth, tapping his foot. He'd spent three months hunting her down. She'd run away like a chicken with her head cut off.

Three months of digging around in the bayou looking for her.

And here she was.

Fat with his kid.

He mused, "You ever planning to tell me about it?"

She considered that and lied, "Yes?"

He uncrossed his arms. She shifted in discomfort. "I'm sorry, suga'. I am. I wanted to. But I didn't want to tie you down or nuthin. Ev'uh. I know how hard it was...to find out that I'm...ya know..."

"Less than half my age?"

Lord.

It sounded sorta funny to hear it aloud.

"Yeah. I promised I wouldn't tie you to me...so I just...let go."

Jesus. She was something pretty amazing. In all his life, he'd never looked at a girl like he was looking at her. A skinny little survivor. She just..let go. To the only thing in her world that she'd had left to hold on to.

Was there, anyone, anywhere, strong than that?

Zoe tilted her head, curious, "How old are you?"

He half smiled, "Does it matter?"

"Maybe. How old?"

And now he laughed. "Old enough to know better than to throw it down on skinny little things in a cabin in the woods without a condom. Apparently, young enough to do it anyway."

She judged his face, amused now, "Forty?"

"You care?"

"Never did. Ev'uh. You come here to drag me back in?"

He laughed. He shifted. She thought, oh shit, and his arms slid around her.

Ok. So...ok. Was she hallucinating?

Her arms curled back. Her face pressed against his neck. He smelled like sunlight and cinnamon or something. So no. No hallucinating.

And he asked again, "You care?"

Zoe gripped him, breathing. She whispered, "No. I don't. If you stay with me, I'll let you drag me anywhere you want."

He leaned back to see her face. Her hands stayed on his arms, stroking. And he put one on her belly. The baby kicked his palm, bringing his eyes to hers with something like wonder on his face.

She smiled, softly, and cupped his face. "Yeah. Neat huh?"

And he whispered, "He'vy."

Zoe loved him. It was so painful. It spilled out of her eyes in two fat tears. She laughed, wetly, and cupped his face with both hands. "You are so silly. Such a big silly man. Why are you here, Chris Redfield? What do you want? You big hero."

He picked her up, under her arms like she was nothing, and hooked her around his front. She curled, holding on.

And he answered her, the man who'd once fled into the dark without knowing who he was. The man who'd fallen in love with a girl without knowing who either of them were. The man who'd never given up or backed down or left her behind.

The only person in her life that had ever been, without trying, a hero.

"Don't you know the answer to that, Zoe? I don't want to be your hero. I'm not a hero at all. Just a man. Just your man. If you'll have me."

Lord.

She gripped his ears. She laughed and kissed his mouth, "Stupid, wonderful, brave and selfless man...you kidding? I can't think of anything in the entire world I could possibly want more. What kinda girl turns down a hero?"

And she wasn't hallucinating at all when that hero, who wasn't a hero at all but just a man, just a man who loved a skinny little girl in the middle of the bayou and never looked back, pulled her in close - and didn't let go.


End file.
